The Burning Titan: Part II
by MercedesCarello
Summary: (Recommend reading Part 1 first!) Leaving chaos in its wake, the Burning Titan has abandoned the Walls to their fate. It heads for the Carello family ranch, Mercedes in tow. With Commander Erwin's backing, Jean leads a small group in a rescue attempt – can he also convince the Titan to save those it just attacked? Or will the love of one woman be the undoing of all humanity?
1. Chapter 1: The House of Heaven

**A Note from the Author:** Welcome, everyone, to Part II of _The Burning Titan_!  
Hopefully you're not new to this but if you are, I heartily recommend reading Part I in order to have any idea what's going on. :) Also, you should probably be aware that this is AU from both manga and anime, and **may contain manga spoilers**!  
With the obvious exception of the Burning Titan concept and my original characters, I own nothing! All else of Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama.  
And last but not least - please review! It means a lot - don't just love me and leave me. ;) I'm grateful to hear anything you have to say. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 1: The House of Heaven**

Marco had managed to get all the way to the Carello ranch in his Titan form, having toned down the flames covering his body to practically nothing. Now that they stood in the overgrown courtyard, he crouched and laid the unconscious Mercedes in the grass before shivering violently and letting his body dissolve into ash. He heaved himself backward out of the dry, chalky nape of his carcass' neck and took deep gulps of air, getting his bearings. He kept his eyes shut and covered his nose and mouth with a hand as his remains crumbled around him and clouded the air. Although it was something he'd never get used to, it was easier now than it used to be and for that reason, was easy to set aside in light of his more immediate concern.

He relocated her. The bangle on her right wrist glinted briefly like a firefly, beckoning him. "'Cee," he gasped and stepped over to her. It felt like he hadn't spoken in years.

Though it had pained him to do so, while he was a Titan he had taken the liberty of pulling the harpoon all the way through and out of her leg, and cauterized the wound to stop the bleeding. No doubt she had passed out from the pain, and the burns and bullet wound she'd sustained would still need attention. Despite his exhaustion Marco picked her up yet again and trudged toward the front door of the ranch.

"Hang on, I've got you," he said, like he'd wanted to say that moment he'd saved her back at the gate. She hung limply in his arms.

He looked up at the two-story, modest yet well-constructed building, taking in its stucco walls and tiled roof, its miraculously-intact windows. It was larger than he'd expected for a building out in the middle of a forest beyond the safety of the Walls; it had likely housed more than just Mercedes' parents and grandparents. It'd been locked up and vacant for – what was it that he had been told? – nearly sixteen years. Despite this, it sat against the gray early-morning sky and light of the low spring moon like the refuge Marco had hoped it would be. It truly seemed to be the House of Heaven.

"You're home, 'Cee," he whispered. "I've brought you home."

With difficulty Marco readjusted his grip and tried the door, but found it locked. He backed up a couple of steps and kicked it in instead. Though his body begged him to collapse in the entry foyer, he forced himself to step carefully over the threshold, holding Mercedes close, into her childhood home and push the door shut with his shoulder behind him. Several years' worth of dust assaulted him, even managing to drown out the perpetual ashy smell of his clothes.

As he walked forward, his eyes adjusting somewhat to the darkness, his bare feet were greeted by a rug that warmed the tile. From what he could tell, a little ways in on the right was a set of stairs to the upper floor; another wide doorway to his left told of a living area; he suspected the doorway straight ahead was to the kitchen. It was hard to make out any other details.

_I need to lay you down,_ he thought, and took the stairs cautiously. They creaked, and he could feel the layers of dust powdering his soles as he ascended. Another hall immediately spread to his left and right at the top, and another was in front of him, which he took. Two doors either side, and the one at the end held a bathroom; he backed out of it and tried one of the other doors, and sighed in relief to find it was a bedroom silvered by the moonlight coming in through the two wide windows immediately in front of him.

The double bed in the middle of the room, in front of the windows, was made, pristine as if it'd been left mere days ago other than years. Another, smaller window was to his right, next to which was a cobwebbed rocking chair and a half-full bookcase, while on his left was a dresser and mirror against the wall. A chest sat at the foot of the bed and as he passed it, even through the dust he could see the floral carvings and the scripted initials 'A. U.'. He remembered his mother owning a similar, though less grand chest – finally putting two and two together after so many years and at the oddest of times, he realized it was a bridal chest.

Moving to the left side of the bed, he temporarily placed Mercedes on the floor, propping her against his legs, as he tore back the dusty blanket and the cleaner sheets underneath and flipped the pillow. This done, he laid Mercedes down in it and swatted away larger clumps of dust that had been flumed into the air. He glanced at the nightstand and saw a dry vase with dead flowers, a simple bead necklace buried under the fallen flower petals; the other on the opposite side had an open book laid face-down, a mug with a spoon handle sticking out of it.

_Was this…her parents' room?_ Marco wondered. _It looks like they were expecting to come back._

He took off Mercedes' torn-up knee-high boots so that she would be more comfortable and dropped them in front of the dresser. As he took off her gear harness for the same reason, his eyes passed over her, assessing her injuries: the harpoon had entered the top of her right thigh and exited at a lower point at the back, and what remained of her pants leg was mottled with drying blood and singed black where he'd placed his finger to burn the wound into a blistering, blossoming rose; her arms had streaks of lesser burns that overlapped into dark singe marks and holes on her tank top, likely from the jail cell door, while the left one had taken a bullet halfway up to her shoulder; a nasty-looking inch, nearly two inch graze clipped her upper right jaw, headed for her eye.

The rest of her was riddled with cuts, scratches, grazes and emerging bruises, tearing her clothes where they couldn't find bare skin. He'd be surprised if she also hadn't escaped with a broken bone or a dislocation after being dragged through the street like she had been. He reached out to trail his fingers over the older, star-like scar painting the right side of her neck and collarbone – it was nearly the size of his hand. Bits of debris were caught in her blood-encrusted hair.

Marco frowned deeply and his eyes watered; he felt her wounds – the old and the new – as if they were on his own body. Pain overcame him and made him lean over her, passing a hand over her sticky forehead. "Oh 'Cee, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered. He hadn't been able to hear much during his rampage on the gate, but he'd heard enough. "You didn't deserve any of that. I'm sorry for everything they did – I know what you meant, now, when you said they'd frame you – I'm sorry you were right. But it's okay now, we're away from all of that, from all of them. I'm going to take care of you." A tear dripped from his cheek to hers and he smudged it away.

Like a drunkard he stumbled out of the room and turned left, into the bathroom. He swatted away cobwebs from the porcelain and eventually located towels and washrags, but the plumbing was no longer functional. He kicked at the pedestal of the sink and left.

Although he intended to pass the room completely on his way to locate water, he stopped outside it. Part of him still couldn't believe she was lying there. It felt too risky to go downstairs, to leave her again. He stepped back through the doorway, the exhaustion creeping back up on him again and turning everything hazier than it already was, like he was in a dream. Maybe he should have a small rest, he reflected, particularly if he had to pry a bullet out of her arm or potentially reset any bones.

Marco walked to the other side of the bed and it took the rest of his strength to lower himself gently rather than collapse on it beside her. He reached for her nearest hand and held it, feeling the grit coating her palm. Though it was obscured by the smell of ash and dust he could still make out the faint scent of plums in her hair. As the quiet and the sleep settled on him like a heavy quilt, he turned on his side to look at the profile of her face – down her flat forehead and the short slope of the bridge of her slightly turned-up nose, the precise notch of her full lips…

_If everything had been different, would this have been like our room?_ he wondered. _Would I have been carrying her over the threshold as my... Would she have had a chest, too?_ He knew he was being indulgent, but he couldn't help it. Dreams like this had sustained him for the past couple of years, made everything he'd gone through and done tolerable. He knew they'd likely preyed on them in order to get him to do what they wanted – he, like her, had been used – but now here was a chance to start over and surely it was worth taking?

Images of his flaming hands, the melting gates, the trampled homes and corpses came back to him. His stomach clenched and he gritted his teeth. It hurt. All of it hurt. He looked up at the beamed ceiling.

He'd never wanted this; he'd tried to make the best of it. He'd only intended to do only what he needed to do in order to be allowed to retrieve and protect Jean and Mercedes, and that had resulted in only managing to find her and inflict twice the damage. It was catastrophic and it ate away at what little remained, he guessed, of his soul, and would forever. He'd been stunned by the ferocity with which he'd pursued Mercedes, the way he'd abandoned all reason, barely caring about the streets that'd once been home or the people that had once been his – how he'd gladly opened humanity's last doors to hell and insodoing not only shed blood himself, but promised only more to come. All in her name. What would she, or what would Jean, think of him now?

Furthermore, he wasn't sure what would happen now that he had accomplished most of his objective. Would they make him go back and finish the job? Marco was still worried about Jean – would they still keep their promise and allow him to keep Jean from harm? Or had the opportunity gone? The thought of leaving his best friend to die in the oncoming massacre was almost too much to bear. It had torn him apart to have to leave when he did, but – he told himself – if he hadn't, then even he and Mercedes wouldn't have stood a chance. He had to believe that Jean would survive until they were able to make a return.

Marco turned his face to look at her; the sight of her gave him rest but it wasn't quite enough. When her eyes opened again, what would their expression be? That mix of despair and fear he'd seen in the pantry, the jail? Or gratefulness, forgiveness and love? He wasn't sure he could live with himself if it ended up being the former. He'd relied on that one hope – that no matter what happened, at the end she would forgive him, and that they would have each other.

Marco squeezed her hand tighter, for strength. He turned his head into the pillow, and with a slow, deliberate, shaking exhale forced away the tension in his muscles. Tears escaped, and sleep rapidly took their place.

* * *

In her dream, Mercedes was back in the Sina library and in particular, the special research room where she had been sent by Zackly. Only this time the room was barren and dark save for the curtainless windows that allowed light from the blazing inferno outside to stream in, coating the floors and walls with their own dreams of fire. She stood immobile in the space, dressed in a long-sleeved, full length dress that she couldn't determine the color of, with her hair uncomfortably piled up on the top of her head. She had blood on her hands and it dripped from them continuously until she wasn't altogether sure that it wasn't hers.

It took an enormous amount of effort to get her bare feet to move. Mercedes took one laborious step after another until she reached one of the windows; the glass was hot under her hand. Outside the flames were everywhere, so tall and rich that she could barely distinguish the crumbling lines of the buildings.

_I did this,_ she thought. _I may as well have been the Burning Titan, not Marco. I've ruined everything._

She heard Commander-in-Chief Zackly's voice laughing at her. The windows burst and she stumbled back from the flying glass, protecting her face with her arms. Though she was sure she was struck, she didn't feel any cuts.

Some invisible force plucked her from the ground and she hovered in midair in the center of the room, watching as the floor became covered in the mutilated corpses of those she knew, like a veil was being drawn back from them. Mercedes saw her fellow members of the Western Division of the 104th, her reluctant friends from the Southern Division, members of the Scouting Legion, Marco, the Jaguar Squad, Jean, Julia…practically torn to shreds or contorted in unnatural ways, blood everywhere.

The exception was the girl, Krista – Historia. She sat atop the pile of corpses, a dirty fur-trimmed royal cape around her tiny shoulders and a rusted crown askew on her head. Her eyes were open and unseeing, and Mercedes couldn't rightly tell if she was alive or dead, or whether she pitied her or despised her, as if the carnage was somehow her fault as much as her own.

Worst of all, Mercedes couldn't scream, couldn't cry, couldn't move. Nothing was allowed her. She saw streaks of black – gear lines, thicker cables, smaller threads – shoot out at her from every possible angle and felt them impale her. She traced them as they flowed through the air with a mind of their own, as if they weighed nothing more than ribbons, and their ends fell in Historia's hands, her face still expressionless and her eyes closing. Every twitch and pull controlled every single one of Mercedes' muscles until she hung there helpless, a puppet in the hall of the dead and its queen.

* * *

Mercedes gasped as she awoke. Her vision took a moment to focus and by the second deep breath, her body was ignited with pain. The ceiling – a dull blue from darkness and moonlight – loomed above her in an oddly familiar way. She was in a bed, she realized, and turned her head slowly right. There was a nightstand – her mother's nightstand – and slightly beyond it, her parents' dresser.

The pain gave her spots in her vision, and her leg in particular ached with a burning fury that nearly drowned out the other injuries. She felt herself trying to slip back inside herself – or was it outside of herself? – though she tried to hold on a little longer and figure out how she could possibly be here.

_I…I was born in this bed,_ she recalled. Was she still dreaming? She turned her head to the left, abruptly recognizing that there was a hand in her own.

Marco lay next to her, asleep, his mouth parted in his exhaustion. Upon seeing him, her teeth clenched as she remembered everything that had transpired at headquarters, on the road, at the gate. A new wave of a different kind of pain swelled within her, meeting the pain of her body and crashing together and squeezing until there was nothing of her left. She fell back into the blackness.


	2. Chapter 2: The Absence of Reason

**Chapter 2: The Absence of Reason**

By the time dawn had spread itself over the plains, Jean and the small group he led were miles away from the Trost gate at Wall Rose. Oliver's sharp eye had spotted the scorch marks on the earth, even in the dark, and they'd followed them. The flood of Titans they had fought through had become practically nonexistent a short distance from the gate, as if they'd all been called to the breach – or maybe each of them in the area, by that point, were just outside the gate or already inside. Though it had grieved him to leave in what was obvious chaos, Jean forced himself to focus on the mission at hand.

They had been able to deduce from the Titan's tracks that it was headed in a relatively straight line, he suspected all the way to Shiganshina. Fhalz had even speculated that it was headed for outside Wall Maria, and Jean had thought of Reiner, Annie and Bertholt – their 'homeland'. Why the Titan would be taking her there confused and alarmed him. He'd never been outside the Walls, though in an ideal world he had wanted to, and while they'd had luck with the Titans so far it couldn't be guaranteed to continue.

Jean refused – outright refused – to devote any further thought to Baena's mention of the name 'Marco' in association with the Burning Titan. It wasn't possible. It had to be someone else. He could barely contemplate it being someone they knew. She must have misheard. Nonetheless he couldn't help but want confirmation that he was right. The sooner they tracked it down, the sooner he could have that closure.

He thought back to Erwin's speech atop the gate, all the way from everything he'd said about the Carello family to accusing the public of being animals, and their short conversation afterwards. Jean did indeed understand why he'd done it – he was taking the fall, bloodying his hands yet again so that Jean's generation of Scouts, or even Jean himself, didn't have to. Why he thought a purity of that kind would even be relevant, now, seemed idealistic. And yet he'd still entrusted him with a mission of this magnitude and urgency – whatever its fragility. Though he supposed there hadn't been time to do otherwise, it did make him wonder why he'd been the one chosen to lead it. Darkly, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd been chosen in much the same way as Mercedes had been chosen – because he was loyal, and the most expendable.

Yet, it didn't feel that way. Rather, it felt like Erwin wanted him to be the one to bring back a shred of victory, the one to instigate if not lead the turning of the tide. Why? What was so special about him, a Scouting Legion rookie who couldn't kill a Military Police soldier even when her gun had been pointed at his face?

"I find it strange," Julia began over the furious thumping of the horses' hooves, drawing him out of his focus. He still wasn't quite comfortable with her being with them, and was concerned about how the ride might affect her, but it was too late to worry about that now.

Jean looked to his right at her. "What is?" he shouted.

"That we're possibly heading for outside the Walls, when that's where I was originally going."

Jean frowned.

Fhalz, apparently overhearing, sped the gait of his horse until he was riding between them, "We were supposed to be retreating to the Carello family ranch, which is about a day's ride west from Shiganshina. Before we were caught and the Burning Titan fucked everything up anyway."

Jean tried to process this information and find some practical use in it beyond coincidence. There was no reason to realistically think that the Burning Titan would take Mercedes there unless it had a connection to the ranch and a reason for going, since it wasn't like Mercedes could direct it there. That said, beyond Eve's brief solo travels, he really didn't know what else was out there; the origins of the original Titan-shifter trio had remained elusive. He also felt some anxiety and guilt going out there without the rest of his friends on Squad Levi – like finally seeing the outside should be something to share with them, rather than this group that he wasn't as close to. Again, though, there was nothing to be done about that. Mercedes needed him and that trumped all else.

After a moment he called around him to the others, "We'll keep following the tracks." They temporarily clustered around him to better hear. "Soon we'll need to rest. If the Burning Titan really is headed for Shiganshina, we've still got at least a couple of days' worth of riding to do, possibly more. We won't know where it's specifically headed until the tracks change direction." He thought back to Mercedes' solo run; though he wished they could travel nonstop as she had, with Julia here it wouldn't be possible. "Keep to the formation. Don't use gear unless absolutely necessary."

The riders spread back out into a smaller version of the Long-Range Scouting Formation; Jean reflected that even without being here, Erwin continued to influence them.

_Hang on, 'Cee. Wherever you are. I'm coming for you. We all are._

* * *

They stopped at the nearest defensible outpost – a small forest perhaps a third of the way between Wall Rose and Wall Maria that looked like it might die out within the year if next winter was particularly harsh. Jean wasn't altogether certain that they'd be safe from any larger Titans that could come their way, but at least smaller ones could be kept at bay.

"Okay, first things first," he said after doing a preliminary scan of the area. "Let's go over our supplies. Everyone, Julia excepted, have full gas cylinders?" He wandered over to the standing circle of the tiny older woman, the three Garrison soldiers and the auburn-haired Scout.

There were nods and noises to the affirmative.

"How about blades?"

By the time they were done counting, he determined they had about two-thirds capacity, averaging four extra blades each. It had been momentarily interesting to discover that he and Eve, presumably by virtue of being Scouts, had capacity for twelve blades compared to the Garrison soldiers' eight. That had rapidly been replaced by the sudden realization that Mercedes wouldn't have any gear for their ride back.

He cast a glance behind him, where they'd tied their horses up. The fractured sunlight beating down on them from above made their slick coats shimmer. Sabine, Mercedes' sprightly mare, tossed her head and kept readjusting her footing, as if realizing her rider wasn't here when she should be. "Four spare horses between us. How many rifles?"

"Looks like just two, counting Ms Julia's," said Baena. "Speaking of," she turned to Julia, who was lowering herself to sit on a half-rotten stump. Instead of her broom, she was now using her rifle as a walking aid. "I've not seen a rifle like that before."

"It's the third rifle – the one you saved," Fhalz said. He had walked over to her and was now crouching beside it, peering inquisitively at its shiny brass finishings, the polished dark wood of its stock. It looked brand new.

"That's right. This one was mine," Julia acknowledged. She brought it upright and laid it across her knees, brushing dirt off the butt. Like children they gathered around her and once he was closer, Jean could see 'Carello' carved into the stock. "It's breech-loading." With an expert fluttering of fingers she had pulled back a catch and they could see a snake of bullets glinting from the breech down into the stock. "It's much faster to reload than your muzzle-loaded types, and by means of a spring-aided magazine, enables you to have several shots at the ready instead of just one." Her palm opened, covering the breech, and it was closed again with a decisive _clack_.

"I don't understand – why aren't these standard?" Oliver ventured. Jean realized Oliver hadn't been there to hear Erwin's speech atop the gate; neither had Fhalz, but he seemed to have known some other way.

Julia glanced at the tall young man, and rather than with the bitterness Jean expected, her tone was gentle. "That presupposes those in control of these things _want_ advances to be made."

Jean silently watched Oliver's face move quickly from innocent confusion to bitter understanding in a way that was strangely heartbreaking.

"What happened, then?" Oliver asked.

Jean, considering what Erwin had said, wasn't so sure it was a wise question to ask, but before he could object Julia was speaking again. Her tone was matter-of-fact:

"I finalized the designs when I was twenty-six; Léon, Mercedes' father, had been born earlier that year and I was already pregnant with my sixth child. Later that year my husband and I presented the designs and the three trial models to the Court – the Court responded by shooting me with one of them, and blackmailing us for years thereafter."

There was a pause filled with shocked silence. The sounds of baby birds chirping around them seemed mocking. Julia was rubbing one knotty thumb over the 'Carello' carving and not looking at them; the others' expressions varied from astonishment to sadness to awkwardness and Jean knew he had to be the one to redirect them. A couple of years ago maybe he wouldn't have cared to do so, but now he fought for the right way to do it that wouldn't be callous.

"That's one of the several reasons we have to win," he said lowly. "We have to end the cycle of persecution and repression; we can't let them write Carello in the history books as another word for traitor." Jean glanced around at their somber expressions. "So we have to change the authors; we got rid of the old ones, and we're replacing them. If we can get Mercedes back, and convince the Burning Titan to work for us, we're rewriting history already."

"What makes you think it'll work with us?" Fhalz spoke up. "It broke three gates and insodoing breached one Wall, putting yet another third of our territory and population at risk. What's not going up in flames is probably going to be eaten, because of what it did."

Jean sighed. He didn't want to remember the betrayals but he had to. "The other Titan-shifters were people we knew, acting under orders and, we think, some kind of blackmail. If the Burning Titan is also someone we knew, then it's possible that it is also being blackmailed into following orders. And by the way it…" he trailed off, remembering the way the giant hand had reached out and taken Mercedes right in front of his eyes, when he'd been so close…

"By the way it took Mercedes at the outer Ehrmich gate," Eve said for him. Her pale green eyes were bright and sharp with reasoning. "When it could have continued on to the next gate or turned back because it was weakening, yet didn't, shows that something changed – it made a choice. It deviated. It even could have killed her; it saved her instead. There's sympathy in there. Maybe we can use that to our advantage."

Jean thought back to the sound of the Burning Titan's calls as it hammered on the gate – the desperation he'd heard in them, as if it could also hear everything Zackly had said about Mercedes and it, like him, did what it had to do to save her at the expense of all else.

"Do we have any idea who it could be?" Julia asked. "That may help us."

"She said the name Marco," Baena looked around nervously, and her repeating it from earlier made what rationality Jean retained fracture and his blood pressure spike.

He stood and walked over to the horses, aiming to check who, if anyone, had food or water on them. "Marco was my best friend; he died at Trost. I found the half of his body that was left. It's not him." 

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Thank you to Wings of Wax and the mysterious Guest for your continued support! I really appreciate you taking the time to review. :)


	3. Chapter 3: Waking

**Chapter 3: Waking**

Although he really wanted to sleep for the rest of the day, Marco woke in what he guessed was late morning. He released Mercedes' hand as he propped himself up on one elbow. His entire body ached but it was nothing compared to how he knew Mercedes must be feeling. She looked like she hadn't moved, except for her right arm, which now hung out into the space beyond the bed so that the damaged bangle she wore shone in the fierce sunshine streaming through the cobwebbed curtains.

_I have to tend to you,_ he thought, adrenaline stirring in his veins. _I've already left it too long._ Carefully he got off the bed and cracked his back. His medical training was already limited and after nearly a couple of years of non-use, it was enough to make him nervously hesitate. _Find water, find supplies, come on._

Marco reluctantly left Mercedes and resumed his search from the night before. He walked back down the wood-paneled hall, retracing the footprints he'd left in the dust the night before, until it broke out opposite the stairs down. Although he hadn't noticed before, now he could see that the hole for the stairs was completely encased by a railing, revealing that a square hall surrounded it; a skylight – something he thought only the wealthy could have – above the central stairs illuminated the space in an almost magical way, gleaming on the reddish wood, pale yellow walls and the brass hardware of five doors standing sentinel. A slight draught made him shield his eyes and peer more closely at the skylight: one of its smaller panes toward the edge was broken, and explained the few leaves he could see strewn about the floor. He wished he had time to look into each of the rooms and examine the framed pictures on the walls, but he reminded himself to prioritize.

Down the wide staircase he went, and back into the main hall carpeted with a richly-patterned rug with cream fringe. He first glanced left, at the still-closed front door, and saw the empty gun and coat rack beside the door, the dried-up oil lamps hung as sconces along the hall. Immediately in front of him was a wide arch that framed an open-plan living area, still furnished, the decayed remains of a fire in the huge mouth of a hearth. Curiosity got the better of him and he walked into it, eyes casting about at the windows, the modest, what looked like hand-wrought chandelier, the bookcases and their curios, a forgotten breakfast tray and other signs of a life interrupted. To his right, in the corner of the huge room, was a dining area and he went to this next, his gaze darting about the papers and other hobby materials scattered over the twelve-seater, heavy wood table – an artist's materials, engraving tools, books in a pile, bottles of who knew what, a pair of men's shoes half-polished.

Again, to the right, was the kitchen. Marco prayed for water: it wasn't that unbelievable for the upstairs plumbing to have given up the ghost, but if the downstairs plumbing didn't work, he hoped they had an accessible, clean well nearby. The space was dominated by another central fireplace-come-stove surrounded by a wide flagstone hearth, open shelving along the walls, with the doorway to the main hall to his right and immediately opposite it, a back door. A large butcher's block beside the hearth had a rack underneath for several dust-blanketed pots and pans, while the counters even had the decayed remains of the last meal that had been cooked on them; utensils and a couple of plates were in the sink.

Sillier thoughts were brushing against Marco's consciousness – about making Mercedes something to eat and bringing it up to her, changing out the flowers on the nightstand, cleaning the house a bit – and he pushed them away. How long would it be safe for them to stay here? How long until someone came looking for him? If he wanted to start life afresh, somehow, someway, then they couldn't very well stay in the place he'd been instructed to go.

Marco dashed to the sink – the lull he'd been placed in by taking in his surroundings abruptly replaced with more adrenaline as if an army were bearing down upon him – and wrestled with the stiff faucet. He heard the pipes rattle and grumble, but a trickle of cloudy water began to patter into the deep farmhouse sink, darkening the dust on the creamy porcelain and gathering into a tiny gray river. The faucet sputtered several times as the water flow tried to strengthen, the pipes protesting more and the noises bouncing around the kitchen. Marco gathered some into his palm and peered at it – he'd have to boil it.

As he turned to procure a pot from the rack, he was arrested by the sight of a very clean bottle on the butcher's block that he hadn't noticed before; it weighed down an equally dust-free note on a small, single piece of paper. The sound of the water flow strengthening behind Marco mimicked the increasing feeling of dread creeping up his spine. The bottle – squat, corked, clear glass, filled with green-brown liquid – glinted like the eye of a cat as he approached. He didn't touch the note, as if it carried a curse, but read it reluctantly:  
_  
I was glad to see your safe arrival. In the pantry under the stairs you will find an oil diffuser – one tablespoon of the provided tincture heated in the diffuser every hour will help with her pain. I will return in two days._

_~ Two Swords_

Marco swallowed on a dry throat. Two days. Two days until Two Swords – the man who, not long after he'd stepped out of the fire, had taken him under his wing and given him his mission. The man that had told him how to reach the House of Heaven. The man that he barely knew anything about. The gratefulness Marco had once felt toward him, for giving guidance in a dark time and negotiating on Marco's behalf so that he'd be allowed to protect Jean and Mercedes, had grown into confusion and fear.

To calm himself, Marco cleared out the sink and wiped it down, and did the same with a large pot. The water was clearer now and the stream almost normal strength, but he still didn't trust it. In fact, the entire house had practically become suspect. It loomed at his back like the jaws of a Titan, chilling the back of his neck as if one of Two Swords' blades rested there. As he moved to grab the kettle from the hearth, it was now he noticed the bootprints leading into the kitchen from the back door, the brighter glimmer on the doorknob where the dust had been removed by fingers. His hand trembled as he filled the kettle; the weight gradually became enough to stop it entirely.

_Focus. You need to help Mercedes first. You have two days,_ Marco tried to reason with himself. _Two days – but what is he waiting for? It doesn't seem right. Unless he knows, and he's bringing others – No, calm yourself. He probably doesn't even know that you left one gate intact. He'll have no reason to be upset with you. Besides, even if he is, you can roast him alive._

Marco brought the kettle back to the hearth and made a haphazard job of clearing out the ashes. He piled on the wood that'd been left in the gap between the butcher's block and the hearth – it was light and crumbly due to decay but it'd have to do for the time being until he could hunt down more. There were only a few matches left in the box he found on the counter and he hoped he could find more of those, too.

Once the fire was going – it took a couple of attempts and the absurdity of him, of all people, not being able to efficiently start a fire, made him chuckle darkly to himself – he replaced the kettle over it and went in search of the pantry. If the oil diffuser was in there, then there might also be other medical supplies. If he kept himself busy, everything would be fine.

* * *

Mercedes was wrenched from her dreamless sleep by a spike of pain. She thrashed and cried out; the bright light of day seared her retinas when her eyes flew open. Someone was holding tightly onto her left arm and it was from here that the pain originated.

"I'm sorry! Here, bite down!" came Marco's voice.

Mercedes flinched as a small bundle of cinnamon sticks was shoved between her teeth. If she hadn't been in pain she would have ranted about him not being able to find anything else. Instead she clenched her fists and tried to remain still – Marco, kneeling on the floor beside the bed, held a pair of bloody tweezers in his free hand and they hovered over the bullet wound in her left bicep, which was bleeding afresh. One rivulet had already leaked onto a towel he'd placed under her arm.

"I've almost got it," he said next.

Her breathing came out in quick, heavy hisses, disturbing the hair that'd fallen in her face. Mercedes let her head fall back. She growled as Marco dug into her arm with the tweezers again, taking what felt like an inordinate amount of time to fish around in her flesh before she felt them be plucked from her. There was a tap and the sound of metal bouncing and rolling over the floorboards. She looked back down at her arm, where Marco was beginning to clean the wound. The bundle of cinnamon sticks rolled down her front and bounced off the bed as she spat it out.

"Thanks," she said, because it was what she was supposed to say.

"No need to thank me," he replied with a small smile.

Mercedes continued wincing as he cleaned her arm in silence with warm water and a soft rag. She noted that she was now in the middle of the bed, and her bare legs were chilly. Her bangle had been removed and now sat on her mother's nightstand, nestled in dry, old flower petals beneath a small bouquet of fresh ones. The flowerheads were coins of creamy pink and white, fired into porcelain by the sunlight.

As she stared at the vignette, all the pain and guilt and terrible things that were going to spit out of her mouth suddenly halted. Images of the scathing crowd that'd done all of this to her, swaying above her like a heavy, angry sky, were gone from her mind. Albeit briefly, she felt peace.

At first it felt like a phantom lifting her arm, and then she remembered that Marco was here. He was tenderly winding gauze around her bulletwound – the starched, pristine white juxtaposed against her skin, already the color of tea but now as dirty as pond water. She watched his hands – soft, quick – and remembered how he'd grabbed her through the shattered gate as a Titan. He'd brought her here.

"How did you know this place existed?" she whispered.

He must have noticed the cracks in her voice, because he picked up a mug from the floor and handed it to her. She took it with her unoccupied hand and sipped – lukewarm tea.

"I was told where to go," he said.

"By who?" she prompted, but didn't have the energy to express the impatience she felt. She lowered the mug and settled it on her sore stomach.

Marco tucked the loose end of the gauze into the wrap. It wasn't the best job she'd seen but it would do. He bent over a washbowl, also on the floor, and rung out his rag. The steam that rose from the hot water smelt of witchhazel. He began to clean other, smaller cuts on her arm and she let him. "The same person who gave me my mission – of course, he was only a messenger. He also negotiated my terms for me, so I could protect you and Jean."

Mercedes took in a deep, nervous breath at Jean's name. Her throat constricted and it almost felt as though her body was being pulled forward in an effort to get back to him. She blinked a couple of times.

"I know him as Two Swords. I don't know his real name. But he's the one that told me how to get here," Marco added.

She supposed it didn't matter right now. The salient facts were that she was away from the chaos of the Walls, and she wasn't in good shape. She tried to lift her right leg and found it nearly impossible without pain shooting up and down the entire limb; at least she wasn't bleeding. She stared at the huge, mottled rosettes of fresh burn scars that covered three-quarters of her thigh. She could tell it was tender by the way even the light rub of the sheets underneath it stung like she was soaking it in lemon juice. Parts of it were chapped and split and wept a little; all of it was angry-looking, all shades of red, pink and peach stirred together as if someone had come along and dripped paint on her leg.

"I'm sorry – that was me. I had to get the harpoon out," Marco said. "And if I hadn't…well."

"If you hadn't cauterized it, I would have lost a lot of blood," she finished for him, not looking away. "You did what you had to do and I'm thankful. Besides," she took another sip of tea, "scars don't bother me."

She had difficulty looking at him – it was hard to believe he was really alive, hard to believe the things he'd done. All of this felt surreal. Mercedes focused again on the flowers on the nightstand, tracing the thin green stems down into the clear, bulbous vase and from there, settling on her bangle. Even from this distance she could see it was warped and flattened in a couple of spots, and no doubt other stones had been lost. Its head was turned away from her, as if in shame of having failed to bring her the protection it had been lauded to possess.


	4. Chapter 4: Crucible

**Chapter 4: Crucible**

Marco wasn't sure how to treat her, or how to talk to her. After taking the time to deduce that miraculously, none of her bones had been broken except for maybe a rib, exploring the possibility of a concussion, and Mercedes quite nonchalantly popping a dislocated shoulder back into its socket, they had been silent for an hour now – her earlier words, spoken so casually, had a confidence as thin as the first ice on a lake and had soon melted away into memory. The way her eyes roved over the room, settling on objects or parts of her body to grow distant and then re-emerge from an inner fog, barely alighting on him…

_Shock, maybe. But how do I – how do I handle that?_ he frowned. He sat beside her and picked splinters out of her knee. He'd done his best to clean her wounds but it didn't seem to do anything for her soul. It was like watching her slowly drown, and he struggled to know what to say to cast her a lifeline.

"I cleaned the bathroom down the hall as best I could," he tried gently. He glanced up at her expressionless face. "I thought maybe you'd like a bath, at some point. Maybe something to eat?"

Mercedes dragged her eyes up to his, like two heavy stones up a mountain. The brightness in them wasn't her usual fire – rather a helplessness that caused his attempt at cheer, at normalcy, to wither.

His breath caught in his throat. Acting of its own accord, his body leaned forward and one hand reached out to cup her face. "'Cee, I promise it's okay. We're safe." When her face didn't take on any expression, his heart developed another crack. "All those things we went through, you and I – we don't have to experience them anymore. It's in another world. We're free of it. We're going to be okay now," he continued, trying to smile. "First we're going to get you better, and then," he searched for the next part of the plan that eluded him.

"And then?" she repeated in what could barely be called a whisper.

"And we'll start a new life," Marco finished. Although he was fairly certain his next step after securing their safety would be to go back and attempt to get Jean, he wasn't sure if it was wise to broach the idea of going back to her.

Still her face remained unnervingly blank. Her gaze dropped to her lap and his hand dropped with it.

"I promise," he added after a pause. But what did he promise, exactly? He was barely capable of wrapping a wound. It seemed that after managing to rescue her at the Ehrmich gate, he'd used up his potential and there wasn't anything left. How could he promise her safety, a new life? He'd not been able to do anything on his own for her – even her rescue had apparently required someone helping him turn into a Titan, of all things – would it be any different now? Would Two Swords have to help him again? As much as Marco wanted to be rid of the man and every motive he pulled in his wake, for Mercedes' sake, it might be the only way. Marco wasn't positive he could do it alone.

He snapped out of his thoughts. "How about we start with that bath?" he suggested and smiled. "I'll need to carry water up for you, so just sit tight for a little longer." He stood and rushed to comply.

* * *

As Marco left the room, Mercedes began to shake, only slightly at first and beginning in her core, but growing stronger until it consumed her entire body into what resembled a seizure. She curled over onto her side, hauling her right leg up to her chest, and ran her hands over herself. An all too familiar abyss of sadness, horror, guilt and anger opened up within her and weighted her to the bed like an anvil in her gut. She began to weep, at first silently, and then more loudly. It felt like walls – her personal Walls – had come down one after another in a blaze of causality and predestination.

_What have I done? What I have I done? _rattled around in her head. _Humanity will go extinct because of me._

Her wailing became uncontrollable; she wasn't entirely sure what words she was screaming. Her hands clawed at the sheets, she bared her teeth like a wounded animal, squeezing her eyes shut. If Marco had come back she wouldn't have been able to tell. The crucible of her childhood, that she had been brought to for safety, seemed only to serve as the forge in which she'd be melted down to her original, helpless, destiny-less ore – and perhaps that was for the best.

_Because there's no other way out of what you've done. There's no other way to escape. You'll never be safe again. You've already ruined one life. You deserve nothing more than to be mercifully forgotten. Nothing will save you.  
_

* * *

Marco had halted at the end of the hall at the sound of Mercedes' screams. His first instinct was, of course, to run back, but then they grew louder, angrier, like she was trying to expel her own soul. The mournful, harrowing sounds took the strength and confidence from his bones and he sank to the floor, hiding his face – he could feel the sounds stirring something similar in his gut: an empathy, a shame, a regret.

He could make out words: "No", "Granna", "What have I done", "Jean". He felt his chest cave in a little at Jean's name. Why would she call his name? There was no logical reason for it, unless – unless…

"No, that's not possible," he moaned. "I must have misheard. He never liked her. He wouldn't have done that to me. No. I must have misheard."

He refused to contemplate it any longer. A shriller scream racing down the hallway and wrapping around his throat shattered all thought.

* * *

Later, Marco poured the last pail of warm water into the tub. He hadn't made the water too hot for fear of it causing her burns and other wounds further pain. He placed the empty pail outside the door and checked the space over again – he'd laid a towel on the floor to serve as a bathmat, while another sat on an overturned pail for her to dry with; a washcloth was laid over the tub edge; he'd managed to find some soap and an old wide-toothed comb and these he'd placed on the windowsill above the bath, within arm's reach. There was nothing else to do but go get her.

Mercedes' cries had become hoarser and had finally died out after half an hour. The entire time he'd been rooted to his spot on the floor in the hall. It had tortured him to stay there, but he'd felt unable to go to her – like this was something he could not be part of. The urge to take her in his arms had been snuffed out by his shame, knowing that he was accomplice to her suffering. Not to mention it had been as if she was also crying for him and his own despair. Marco had found it so strange that there they were, five meters away from each other, suffering the same agony but unable to be together.

Marco tried to coax his somber expression into something more like his old self – a smile, a lightness, a hope. He had to be her light, now. He exited the bathroom and re-entered the bedroom where she lay prone on the bed like a dark leaf on pale stone. It both made his heart heavy and moved it that even now, broken as she was, she was still everything to him.

"I've run you a bath. It'll make you feel better," he said as he came up beside her. Her face was hidden by her hair and she didn't move. The only sign she was still alive was the way her side rose and fell with her breathing. "Come on, 'Cee."

Marco carefully pushed his hands under her shoulders and lifted her upper body, and she let him. He felt encouraged by the way she righted her good leg underneath her when he pulled her off the bed, and helped him carefully walk her out of the room, but a glance at her forlorn face and the one red-rimmed eye he could see, he knew there was still much more work to be done.

He didn't let her go until he saw her place her hands on the tub. After that, she didn't seem to know what to do. He frowned. "Can you…are you able…?"

"Yes," she breathed, without emotion.

Marco stepped back and turned away. He didn't want to go far in case she needed him, and so carefully lowered himself to sit cross-legged just outside the doorway facing the hall. It stretched in front of him like a Titan's throat, with light at the end. Behind him, he heard the quiet _shush_ of Mercedes taking off her clothes and the even quieter plop as they were dropped to the floor. He heard the squeak of damp skin on porcelain and a low hiss, and shortly, water being disturbed very slowly and very gently, a slight slosh and a high-pitched whimper that made him wince. A glance over his shoulder told him that she had just finished lowering herself into the water; the tub was deep, and she was only visible from the shoulders up. She didn't seem to take any notice of the fact that he was still there. The light from the window behind her was caught in her hair and grazed one shoulder, painting it copper.

He felt compelled to keep talking to her, as if the longer there was silence between them the harder it would be.

"For the last year or two," he began quietly, "ever since I woke up from that nightmare and learned what I'd become, I've been subject to someone else's ideas, someone else's dream. I did what I had to do because I knew it'd lead me to what I ultimately wanted. Back at the Ehrmich gate…" he moistened his lips, breathed in deeply as he remembered her being dragged through the streets. "When I saw them take you, I forgot all about my mission. I forgot all about bargains and greater objectives. I know you must be in pain, having heard all you did, and that you must be thinking that you've ruined everything. If anyone ruined everything, it's me."

Water sloshed again. He heard the washcloth being rung out and the shallow _plinks_ of droplets falling. But still she didn't speak.

"I wanted to save you from that hell," he continued. "I'm glad I was able to – that it was the one good thing to come from all I've done." He paused, clenching his hands and pressing his thumbs over his index fingers until the knuckles popped. "It seems we've both lost our old lives. But at least we have each other. All I want now is to build a new life, with you."

* * *

_Build a new life,_ Mercedes repeated internally. She pulled her body forward with her good leg and sank completely under the water, keeping her eyes open. It stung a little at first but then, the world seemed mercifully quiet. She watched a bubble or two from her nose rise to the surface and her hair, gradually becoming soaked, sink around her face and the dried blood and dirt that had been in it begin to lift away.

He was right, after all. It wasn't like she could go back, now. All she had was this house, as if she'd been forced back to birth and had to start over. And maybe that was for the best. Why would it have happened if it wasn't meant to be? And who was to say that if she had been able to stay, that she would have lived, or that Jean or Julia or her squad wouldn't have died under her hand? Marco had indeed saved her from all that, and here was a chance to begin again. Her clock, her fate, seemed to have been reset.

Lazily, she blinked, and ran her tired hands through her hair a few times, dislodging leaves and twigs and scabs and who knew what else. Carefully, she rose back up out of the water.

"Are you all right?" Marco asked.

"I'm just washing my hair," she said distantly, and reached for the soap on the windowsill. "Could you find me some clothes?" She didn't know where to instruct him to look.

"Sure, of course."

She heard him stand and the sound of his bare feet padding away. She started to scrub the soap into her scalp and it stung where there were cuts.

But when was it ever that simple? How could so much of her hate and fear be left behind? Would the acres surrounding this ranch be enough to bury it? Was there nothing worth saving, or going back for?

Mercedes was reminded of the night she'd left the Scouting Legion under Erwin's orders to transfer back to the Garrison – the night she'd made the run. She hadn't known at first whether she was going to follow orders or take the opportunity to leave everyone behind. In the end she'd chosen to ride for the Wall. In the end she had been rewarded. She thought, too, of how she hadn't known whether she would assassinate the King until she was aiming – to that end, she had been punished.

Now it seemed the choice was being laid before her again. Only this time, Jean wasn't here to protest yet ultimately let her go. It felt off-balance as a result. He was meant to be here to scream at her and object, make her promise to come back to him. Had she truly heard him calling her name, back at the Ehrmich gate, when she had hung there swaying in the breeze like a torn flag at half-mast? Or had she imagined it all? Or was he dead? Had she imagined it all?

She dipped back under the water to wash the soap from her hair, tempted to open her mouth and expel the air from her lungs and close her eyes to the light. Through the water, she heard Marco's footsteps returning.

* * *

**A Note from the Author** \- A huge thanks to the continued support of Wings of Wax and ohtobealady, and everyone who's been reading! Please PLEASE take the time to review, even if it's a one-liner. Also, apologies for the slower frequency of updates - these are a little longer than my usual fare because we've got a lot of heavy stuff to slog through first!


	5. Chapter 5: Losing Time

**A Note from the Author:** Big thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed! As noted before, Eve belongs to the wonderful Wings of Wax, and is from her equally-awesome Survivor series - heartily encourage you to check it out!

* * *

**Chapter 5: Losing Time  
**_(The second night; two days after fleeing Wall Rose.)_

Julia shifted position; the roots of the tree she curled against combined with the extra blankets that had been donated to her made her sleeping arrangements not so unbearable, but as usual her brain wouldn't stop. It was made worse by the fact that out here, an estimated day's worth of hard riding from Shiganshina, she had none of her coping strategies to hand. Having operated on four hours' sleep a night since the move to Klorva and her most productive time being at night, she was used to having an invention or experiment to fiddle with or at least a book to read. Out here there was nothing, leaving more than enough room for dark thoughts to move in.

Huffing to herself, she threw back the blanket and pulled herself to her feet. She grabbed her rifle and walked away from the tree toward the low fire they'd made in their camp. Baena, Fhalz and Oliver slept in a triangle next to the fire, using each other's ankles or calves as pillows, and Julia stood over them and smiled. She'd grown fond of them over the last year, ever since Mercedes brought them over for her approval like she subconsciously seemed to do for anyone important to her. In many ways she thought of them as additional grandchildren. Her smile grew wider when she detected Baena's unusual peep of a snore.

Julia scanned the perimeter of their little camp. The Giant Trees rose above them like an ink painting of the vaulting of a cathedral, little more than different textures of shadow obscuring the night sky. They'd gone in deep enough to have protection from the Titans but not so deep that they'd lose time getting back out; she estimated in an hour or two it'd be time for them to get moving again in the safety of night.

_Neither Eve nor Jean is here,_ she thought. _I'm fairly sure Jean hasn't slept since we left._ She knew it shouldn't be any of her concern, and that she should be sleeping herself and trusting in the young man's judgment. But since when had she been any good at trust? She sighed. _Damn maternal instincts._

Stepping quietly, with the support of her rifle Julia walked to the penumbra of the firelight, where it began to dissolve into the plum-colored dark. As though the light had also been a sound bubble, it was only now that she began to hear a low conversation. She paused by a tree and peered into the wilderness beyond, where she could faintly make out Eve and Jean standing beside one another, their backs to her.

"Of course it's not something I can just put aside," Eve was saying in a heated but still low tone. "No matter what Eren's done, I can't forgive him for having tricked us. He put my people at risk."

"He didn't trick you – we just weren't as forthcoming with the information as we should have been and I'm sorry for that," Jean countered.

"Whatever, it's the same thing. And now we have another one of those fuckers doing the exact same thing – again my people are in danger, after we promised their safety –"

"_You_ may have promised. _I_ didn't. There's no true safety and you know it," Jean bit back. There was a stung pause. "Look, I'm sorry for what's happened but it's outside of our control and now we have to do what we can and quickly."

"My point is that I'm only here to help you get Mercedes back. I owe her. To that end, I can't guarantee I won't kill the Burning Titan on sight, regardless of who it turns out to be," Eve warned. "Even if it turns out to be your friend. You understand that, right?"

"It's not going to be Marco. How many times do I have to say that?" Jean said. Julia was impressed that he was managing to keep relatively calm – he sounded older than she remembered.

"Stranger things have happened." Julia could practically hear the helpless shrug in Eve's voice. "We can't even trust death, lately. And judging by what Baena said that 'Cee told her, this Marco guy would have motive to take her because of how –"

"It's not him!" Jean growled.

Julia frowned. She could pick up on Eve's meaning and didn't like the picture it presented.

"For your sake I hope not but you have to consider all possibilities, Jean," Eve continued.

"You're not here to entertain this kind of crap or tell me what to do," he said. "All I need you to do is follow orders."

In the low light Julia could see Eve leaning forward and up, pushing her face into his. "I am not here by your order, and in case you haven't noticed, you aren't our Commander or our Captain," she hissed.

Julia finally stepped forward. "All right, that's enough. You two should be sleeping," she said. The younger pair turned to her, obviously startled. "Don't have any better use for your energy?"

"All I'm trying to do –" Eve began.

"Is agitate a situation and a person that doesn't need agitating," Julia cut in. She put a balled-up fist on her hip. "Considering every possibility is all well and good on most occasions but this time, all it does is eat up one's sanity. I don't give a shit who the Burning Titan is. We don't have to until we find it and maybe not even then. Now let's stop this nonsense."

Though she couldn't see in the dark, Julia was fairly certain that Eve challenged her eyes for a long moment before she stomped away. Julia smirked to herself – maybe one day Eve would be another one of her adopted children. She liked her energy.

Her brief amusement faded, however, when she looked back at Jean. He was wandering closer to her, closer to the light, and she was better able to make out his face but it was still unclear, as if she was looking through a fogged-up window. He leant against her tree, still watching the forest though it was obvious they were safe here. He was silent.

"You should get some rest," Julia attempted.

"I can't," he responded. "Not until 'Cee's safe."

"While I appreciate your dedication, you're being a fucking idiot," she said. "Albeit an adorable one." She heard him scoff. "I'm going to forbid Oliver from carrying you should you collapse from exhaustion in the last stretch. So at least sit down or something."

"I'm fine."

Julia carefully navigated the tree roots between them until she stood in front of him. She shook her head and let sincerity return to her voice, "No, you're not." She reached out with her free hand and held onto his arm. "I can see you love my granddaughter, I really can. That's a powerful thing that should not be taken lightly – believe me, I know. But she wouldn't want you to become a wraith of your former self. You have obviously been entrusted with a huge task that can change the course of human history; an opportunity for you to demonstrate leadership and good judgment. How many good leaders do you know, in love or married or widowed, who paid no attention to keeping themselves alive? To do otherwise is amateurish." She paused, just able to make out how he looked away, his gaze lowered. He was rigid under her hand and she squeezed his arm encouragingly. "You know you'll need your strength. Destiny can wait for an hour or two," she said gently.

After a moment she heard him sigh slowly and deeply. "This isn't about destiny. I don't care about grander schemes or anything like that right now."

"Good," Julia said. Though he resisted, Jean ultimately let her pull him away from the tree and guide him back in the direction of the camp. "Now come get rest or I'll have to knock you out." When she glanced up, she saw him finally crack a smile. "Besides, no one gets any prettier from lack of sleep and I'm sure you'll want to be at your most dashing for the main event," she nudged him in the ribs and winked.

* * *

The next morning Jean awoke to the almost-forgotten smell of meat cooking. The pleasant sensation was interrupted, however, when he realized it was indeed morning and there was too-bright daylight.

"Shit," he cursed and bolted to his feet, scarcely taking the time to brush the leaves and dirt from his uniform. Beside him Julia was turning a rabbit on a spit over the fire, and Eve was skinning another while Baena and Oliver watched raptly.

"Mornin' Jean," Baena hummed, not taking her eyes off the rabbit.

"We need to get going – how long was I out?"

"We'll leave when the rabbits are done," said Julia. "You've been asleep for about four hours – don't panic."

"You needed your beauty sleep," Baena nodded. She scrunched her face and waggled her fingers around her head, "You were starting to get all wrinkly, like an apple left in the sun too long."

"We're losing time," he said, frowning at them. He made his way to where they'd piled their saddles only to discover they weren't there. "Where the fuck are the saddles?"

"Fhalz is taking care of the horses. Should be finishing up now, actually," Eve said. "That way we can leave as soon as we've eaten."

Jean stopped short.

"What, did you think you're the only one with a concept of time?" Eve said. "This isn't our first mission."

* * *

Mercedes had lost what little concept of time she'd had. She knew after the bath she'd dressed in a blouse and skirt she presumed once belonged to her mother, and Marco returned her to her parents' bed and attempted to get her to eat some canned goods while he re-tended her wounds. She also knew he'd talked to her here and there, but only a word or two would make its way into her consciousness. He'd encouraged her to rest.

She drifted in and out of sleep until it was impossible to distinguish between reality and shallow dreaming. At some points it would still be daylight, others night; sometimes Marco would be sitting or sleeping next to her, sometimes it would be Jean, or other times still a carpet of corpses picked at by crows; sometimes she felt outside of her body; sometimes she would try to rip her skin off, starting at the rough seams of her scars. Most of the time she had no idea what she was feeling but occasionally, she felt everything.

Had an entire day passed? Several? A few weeks? Maybe she'd been here all her life – maybe her family never left the ranch. Maybe she'd been trapped in her body ever since she was born.

It was impossible to truly tell when the nightmare began. Mercedes was aware of lying in a bed that seemed very similar to the one she'd been trapped in, only this time, the pain of her wounds had been replaced by a much more acute and overpowering one, concentrated around her pelvis and abdomen. She was vaguely aware of two, possibly three figures around her, but they were merely gray shapes with touches as light as fog and voices little more than wind. In contrast, every shred of her could feel the intensity of the way her hands gripped the bed and her body, the way the sheets were slick with hot blood underneath her, and the way she was screaming and heaving with all her might – when she recognized the sensation as 'pushing', she realized she was giving birth. It felt like her soul was splitting in two.

As though held aloft by fog, first one and then another blood- and fluid-covered infant was lifted from her pain – a boy and a girl – and that pain began to subside. She knew they were her own, but not just in the way all children are of their mother's flesh and blood; rather, they were _her_. Two pieces of her, wailing, bright red among the dark charcoal fog.

The joy Mercedes always thought she'd feel when looking at her children for the first time was replaced by something much more unexpected – the need to choose.

_How could I…how could I ever…_

Before she knew what was happening, Mercedes' deep breaths were hitched by sharp pains in her mouth. Fear overtook her and her hands shot to her teeth. She cried out and buckled over as her jaw unhinged with a crack and all of her teeth sharpened and elongated, tearing over her lips and protruding like a handful of jagged knives.

Worse still was the sudden, obscene hunger overcoming her. She seized one – she wasn't sure which – of her crying children in her hands. Unable to stop herself, she tore into it, devouring it whole.

Mercedes woke up screaming and crying, pushing her fingers into her mouth as if to rip out the flesh she'd consumed. The bedroom was dark and through the shadows, Marco practically slammed into her to wrap his arms around her. He held her close and repeated soothing noises in her ear, rocking them gently.

"It's okay, 'Cee, it's okay. I'm here. You're all right," she could make out Marco saying.

It took a few minutes for Mercedes' screams to stop, but the tears and the shaking were relentless. With her ear to his chest, she could hear his heart clamoring as fast as hers. There were flashes of lightning through the windows and the patter of rain on their panes. She hid her face against him and let herself cry some more, still reeling from the image of shreds of her child slipping through her inhumanly long fingers.

* * *

Marco continued to rock Mercedes back and forth on the bed, shushing her. Her screams had startled him from his own sleep, jumpstarting his heartrate, but it was his own panic that had sustained it. This was the latest of several such screaming sessions and she showed no signs of being comforted by him. He didn't know what else to do. Nothing he said or did seemed to work.

_What can I do to help you? I just want to give you some rest, _he thought, smoothing his hand over her hair and turning his head to look at the window. The rain was heavy, something he normally found soothing but did nothing on this occasion.

She fell limp against him, her cries having fallen quiet. Marco craned his neck to look at her – it was becoming difficult to tell when she was sleeping or unconscious ever since her shock seemed to have taken her over. He gently laid her back down.

"I'm going to get you a drink," he whispered. Her closed eyes fluttered a little but did not open.

He took the glass on the nightstand and carefully backed away to head for the kitchen.

He'd avoided it thus far since he didn't know what was in it, but now the image of the bottle of green-yellow oil on the butcher's block downstairs came to mind. Two Swords had written that it would take away her pain.


	6. Chapter 6: Dead Man's Clothes

**Chapter 6: Dead Man's Clothes**

Mercedes hadn't woken since the previous rainy night and in some ways, Marco was grateful. He'd done as Two Swords had instructed: having placed the burner with its candle on the dresser in the bedroom, added oil in its dish and lit it, a heady, woody scent had taken over the room as the oil evaporated. The scent gave him no clue as to the oil's ingredients. After a replenishment or two with the door closed, the room had become very humid.

Although he'd gone in once to change her bandages, Marco had otherwise let her sleep. Her screams from the night before still echoed around in his skull and emphasized how useless he felt. He busied himself with mostly useless tasks such as cleaning the kitchen, in the hope that it would unknot his mind so he could figure out some other way to get through to her, draw her back to reality. The memory of her clinging to his chest was almost too much to bear.

The pantry hadn't yielded much by way of food – the canned goods had seemed the safest and while there were a few barrels of dry goods, he was wary of them having expired. Not that he was confident of doing much with flour and salt. He'd never been much of a cook – he had to admit not appreciating food as much as some – and that fact had become painful. He had to keep his strength up, and nurse Mercedes back to the land of the living. Not to mention that Two Swords was expected back sometime today.

That fact alone increased Marco's nerves. While he found himself wishing that there was another person in the house to diffuse Mercedes' chaos like oil in the air, he also wanted to escape from him. If Two Swords came here, there was no telling if there'd be another chance at freedom. He wasn't confident that he could withstand Two Swords' compelling words, and he didn't want to kill again. It would be easier to just never see him again – but he couldn't move Mercedes again. Not until she was better.

Marco finished properly stacking the wood he'd haphazardly left at the kitchen doorway yesterday, having fortunately gathered some before the rain came down, and now, the exit cleared, took himself into the back yard for a better look around. Perhaps there was something edible outside.

Pasture spread away from him and then up again, cresting into forest. The sky was an oddly luminous steel blue. Immediately around him was an overgrown garden that he hoped contained vegetables or fruit, the lush bushes and heavy flowers coming up to his shoulders and reaching out to brush the raindrops they'd collected against his body. A fine mist remained from the rain as though the clouds were attempting to veil this tiny world. Marco foraged, identifying buried brick paths and lumps in the earth that must have once pronounced rows, and stems snapped in his wake. The smell of sap and disturbed earth was foreign but intoxicating to him and it was surreal to get lost in the clouds of color. It was easy to pretend he was a farmer, though thorns or pulling at stubborn roots would occasionally remind his soft hands that he was not.

* * *

About an hour later Marco wove his way out of the domestic jungle. The hem of his gray shirt cradled a few pieces of fruit and vegetables, a head of lettuce and a handful or two of berries that were staining the dirty fabric. Despite how much effort it'd taken to find those that weren't worm-eaten or partially rotten or unripe, he felt proud of himself. He was even proud of the way his bare feet were covered in mud and of the burs that had attached themselves to the rolled-up cuffs of his trousers. He smiled to himself like a child who'd won a prize at a fair.

Avoiding the rugs, he went back into the kitchen and carefully unloaded his small bright harvest onto one of the counters before hopping up on the one next to the sink. Marco washed off the mud from his pale skin until all that remained were the few moles here and there. He clambered down and knew he really would have to find some clean clothes – his own were singed, dirtied, stained, ripped.

_I should check on 'Cee anyhow,_ he thought. _She may need more water._

He'd retrieved new clothes for her from her parents' room, and had yet to explore any of the others. He suspected they were bedrooms since all of the functional rooms appeared to be downstairs – if that was true, then Mercedes had come from a bigger family than he'd originally thought. Marco took the stairs two at a time and quietly made his way down the hall. The closer he got to the bedroom the stronger the smell of the diffusing oil, even though he'd closed the door.

He froze when he opened it, however. Standing beside the bed, a couple of dirty and bandaged fingertips trailing over Mercedes' cheek, was a man of just less than average height in a long, frayed leather coat. Judging by the damp footprints and the slick curls of his dark hair, he'd only recently come inside. He wore two swords in scabbards at his hips.

"You've taken good care of her," came the musical, catlike purr of the man's voice. He turned slowly around to face Marco, a smile on his weather-beaten, tanned face – a face that betrayed age and horrors seen. His silvery-blue eyes, however, sparkled; the wildness in them was what had Marco constantly on edge no matter how kind he'd been.

"Two Swords," Marco acknowledged. "I…didn't hear you ride in." He shifted feet, eyeing Mercedes. "It's good to see you," he half-lied.

"How has she been?" Two Swords asked next, looking over his shoulder at her.

Marco debated what to tell him, swaying between everything and the bare minimum. "Your tincture seems to be helping her rest. Thank you. Aside from her leg, she doesn't seem to have suffered any serious injuries."

Two Swords nodded to himself. "I was expecting you to bring back another – what was the name? Your friend?"

"Jean," Marco supplied. "I wasn't able to find him at the time." Would now be the right time to bring up the idea of a return?

Again, Two Swords nodded to himself. His eyes cast about the room; Marco couldn't decide if they hinted at thievery or familiarity. "We'll talk about that some more after you change clothes. The bedroom across from this one should have ones that will fit you." He then turned to replenish the oil in the diffuser. He didn't use the spoon, instead pouring straight from the bottle in one smooth, precise movement.

Marco watched him uneasily, but retreated from the bedroom to do as had been subtly instructed. How did Two Swords know that the clothes in the other bedroom would fit him better than those that might have belonged to Mercedes' father? Come to think of it, how had he known there was an oil diffuser in the pantry? Or before, when he entered through the kitchen door without forced entry while Marco had needed to break down the front door?

_Has he been here before?_ he wondered as he opened the door across the hall. _I mean, he knew where this place was, but I didn't think he'd actually gone inside._

The room was painted the color of the sky outside – a somber but beautiful cloudy blue – and sported one window on the far wall. Despite the space of the room and the bed sized for two, it was clear that there had been only one occupant: the bed was in the right-hand corner, for one thing, pushed against the wall; a single nightstand was directly beside it with a cobweb-covered oil lamp, followed by the dresser with its mirror covered by a black cloth, also directly against its neighbor. Even the rug huddled in the corner half under the bed, leaving the majority of the room open. Marco wondered if it had been arranged that way to allow some kind of practice, but there weren't any weapons or equipment of any kind that he could see.

That is, except for the coatstand beside the window. A brown uniform jacket hung on it with its own jacket of cobwebs and dust, but he could just about make out the shield and roses of the Garrison in the shadows of its folds. A framed picture stood on the windowsill beside it, looking into the room at an angle as if mimicking how its subject had stood once. Marco felt a guilty sadness and moved to the dresser. The drawers squeaked as he pulled them out and carefully went through the dead man's clothes.

He wondered if the other bedrooms were also arranged in a similar way. Were they, too, altars for the dead? Something told him that it was unlikely that any of Mercedes' relatives were alive other than her grandmother, since she had never mentioned them. If this room's occupant had been a Garrison soldier, then what about the others? It seemed strange for someone who clearly felt safe living out here to nonetheless volunteer for military service, particularly before Wall Maria fell.

Marco's eye was caught by an odd bulge under the cloth at the bottom of the dresser's mirror. He paused his search for a shirt and reverently lifted one corner of the cloth to reveal a small, wooden toy horse with little wheels under the platform on which it sat, its paint worn nearly completely away and the string, grimy from how often it'd been held, looped around its neck like a bridle. The name 'Valentin' was carved into its platform. Marco gently replaced the cloth.

He dressed in Valentin's clothes – a pair of brown pants and belt, and a white button-up – and was reminded of the Battle of Trost, and how many of his fellow soldiers he'd seen scavenging gear from their fallen comrades. He felt like a vulture but then, wasn't that all life? Taking pieces of the dead in order to remain living?

Two Swords wasn't in the bedroom when he returned, but the smell of the oil was stronger than ever – it made him dizzy to breathe too deeply. But Mercedes still slept soundly, which was what mattered. He sought out Two Swords in the hope and anxiety of carrying on their conversation.

He found the shorter man in the dining area, sifting through the various items on the table in the weak mid-afternoon light. His movements were quick and assured, like an animal. He didn't look up as Marco approached.

"You said you didn't find your other friend," he prompted. He shook the jar of shoe polish beside the shoes, scraped at its contents with a fingernail.

"No," Marco admitted again. "There wasn't time in all the chaos."

Two Swords took the polish over to the sink and dribbled some water into it. Marco watched him open a drawer without looking and procure a knife, and use it to churn and stir the water into the polish. He held it up to the light as he worked. "Did you succeed?" he asked.

Marco felt his chest constrict a little. He thought of Mercedes – how he'd saved her, and promised her a new life, but also of how Two Swords' fingers had trailed over her cheek. "The gates are broken," he said. "As you asked."

"Good. You were a good investment and I'm glad my confidence in you has paid off," Two Swords said, taking the polish back to the table. "The others will be pleased to know that the purge has begun." He picked up the unpolished shoe and cleaned it off before beginning to work at it, finishing the job, and for some reason this more than his words – for he'd heard them before – put him on edge.

"What happens now?" Marco asked quietly.

Two Swords' bright eyes glinted as he glanced up at the younger man. "I'm sure I can convince them to allow you to go back for Jean, if that is your desire. But not until certain other things are accomplished." He continued to furiously rub tar-like polish along the side of the shoe.

"Such as?"

"First I must pass along word of your success. No doubt they'll want to re-send the Colossal and Armored Titans, or retrieve the Female Titan, or perhaps even continue that silly mission to consume the Coordinate."

Knowing the particulars of the Coordinate ability and how valuable it would be to anyone who possessed it, Marco was startled to hear Two Swords call it 'silly'. Was there really something more important to him than the ability of his employer to control all Titans, or uncover the lost memories of humanity?

Two Swords paused, and started on the back of the shoe. "What's your friend like?"

Marco moved away to the kitchen, intending to get started on washing the fruit and vegetables he'd gathered earlier if for nothing else than for something to do. It gave him a few moments to contemplate the strangely friendly question. "I've…known him for a long time. We graduated together – I think he's part of the Scouting Legion, now."

"What did he rank?"

Marco hesitated, his suspicion heightened. "Sixth. Why do you ask?" His fingers carefully gathered the bruised berries together; their juice stained his fingertips like ink, or blood.

"And Mercedes upstairs – what about her?"

Marco frowned at the avoidance of his question. He felt his protective instincts stir. "I'm not sure," he said, though he thought he remembered hearing the rumor that she'd been in the top five of the Western District. He regretted having confessed Jean's rank for a reason he couldn't quite pinpoint.

"I don't believe it'll be difficult to convince them that you should be allowed to retrieve Jean," Two Swords said next. The now-polished shoe was placed on the table and its mate picked up so it could be dusted off. Once done, he waved it at Marco, "These should fit you."

"How do you know?" Marco couldn't help but ask, hiding his exasperation behind a slight laugh.

Two Swords smirked, and Marco attempted to place who he'd seen make that same exact smirk before, but failed. "There are things I just know, son."


	7. Chapter 7: Shiganshina

**A Note from the Author:** First and foremost, thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed so far! You rock. Quick reminder for the chapter below that the character of Eve belongs to Wings of Wax, from her Survivor saga.

* * *

**Chapter 7: Shiganshina**

On the fourth day, they rode into the ruins of Shiganshina. Passing through Wall Maria proper and the broken inner gate was like passing through a veil, not helped by the cloudcover and the mist that seemed to have collected in the area, smudging everything further. Their pace slowed. Jean was reminded of walking with Mercedes atop Wall Rose, when the rain and the wind had obscured everything but her and his purpose – here now too it grounded him, kept him moving them forward.

There was hardly a building that was recognizable. No doubt due to the heavy Titan activity over the past seven years, the walled city had been toppled and trampled into little more than rubble scarcely rising above a story. Even the streets were almost completely buried after having been pounded into the mud and weeds. Here and there were disjointed parts of skeletons. The further inward they rode, the greater the smell of decay.

_I never thought I'd make it this far,_ Jean thought as he recalled the numerous attempts by the Scouting Legion, always with the intent to reclaim Wall Maria. And this was the way they were supposed to do it? Turn what was little more than a pile of rocks into a stronghold? Aside from what remained of the Walls and the gates, there was very little by way of tactical cover.

"We'll have to hurry," Fhalz said as he rode up beside Jean. "There's not much height out here for us to use."

Jean wanted to snap that he was very much aware of that, but held his tongue. He scanned the area for Titans – it was unrealistic to expect that they would be able to get by without directly engaging one here. "Let's take the best route for the horses that follows the tracks. We can't afford to lose either."

"I have a suggestion."

Jean groaned inwardly. Throughout the trip Fhalz had offered up several suggestions or made snide comments, no matter how much Baena tried to keep him in check. He knew Fhalz was 'Cee's unofficial second-in-command; no doubt he resented being led by someone other than her.

"You're the most proficient of us – you've used your gear on flat terrain the most, being a Scout," Fhalz acknowledged, "so we need to conserve you as a last-ditch resource. If you and Eve can stay around Julia and leave any encounters to our squad, we won't risk you as much."

Jean was surprised, and struggled to come up with an adequate dismissal.

"Besides," Fhalz added, looking away, "'Cee wouldn't forgive us if something happened to you."

Jean moistened his chapped lips. After a moment's further hesitation, he said, "I'll trust you and the Jaguars, then."

He saw Fhalz smile, which was more of a stretching of his mouth than a raising of its corners. "Thanks. You're an all right guy, Kirstein. I guess we'll let her keep you." He peeled away and slightly ahead.

"Let's pick up speed," Jean called. He could hear Titan footsteps thudding through the ground, even up here on horseback. "Jaguars take the lead. Eve, you and I are staying with Julia – don't engage unless necessary."

"Ol', Baena," Fhalz shouted. They rode up either side of him.

"Revised initial strike patterns?" Jean could make out Baena saying.

"Yeah. Baena, you keep to form. I'll go first, and circle back around for the fourth strike," Fhalz said. "Oliver, I need you to take over Mercedes' spot – can you do that?"

"Got it."

The horses picked up speed into a gallop along the scar of main road, which ended in the pale, jagged hole of the outer gate that led to the fabled outside world. The buildings either side of the road grew higher the farther out they went, having not been trampled as badly, and between their skeletons Jean could see the shadows of three Titans moving through the mist in their direction. A large, gangly one was immediately ahead, closer to the gate, as if the black scorch marks of the Burning Titan's footsteps were leading them straight to it.

Jean watched as the three Garrison soldiers stretched into a line with Fhalz in the lead, followed by Baena and then Oliver. Fhalz sped ahead even faster, leaving them behind, as he headed for the twelve-meter class blocking their path in the main road. Baena then climbed onto her horse's saddle, facing left as best she could, and fired her lines. He had just enough time to see how they impacted a Titan rather than one of the fragile walls before Oliver's voice was shouting at him.

"Canter!" he demanded, a hand reaching out to glide over the mane of first Baena's vacant horse and then Fhalz's as they fell back into the herd.

It all happened very quickly after that. Jean saw Fhalz's blade catch a rare ray of sun and glint amongst the clouds – he hovered for a precious moment over the twelve-meter's neck, its long arm sweeping up to grab him. But Fhalz's deathstrike was swift and accurate; the wedge-shaped chunk of the nape of its neck sluiced away and the Titan fell to one side.

Jean's gaze returned to Baena in a flash. She was jumping from Titan to building ruin to Titan, doing little more than scratching them and leading them closer to the main road. They took her bait and, their hungry mouths baring their yellowing teeth, grabbed and bit at her, following her and knocking over already-ruined homes and businesses as they went. He could hear her making an excited noise that he dared to say sounded musical.

Baena, followed by the two eight-meters and the five-meter, crashed into the road onto the corpse of the slain twelve-meter, the debris and dust mixing with the steam and the mist to create a foul-smelling cloud that made it difficult to see. Jean's first instinct was to halt their horses but he knew they'd have to go through it. He waved an arm frantically behind him and looked back to see first Julia and then Eve falling into a line behind him as they veered right, into what Jean hoped would be the clearest path. He hoped the other horses would follow suit. Julia had released her reins and was raising her rifle to her shoulder.

Jean brought out one blade and looked ahead. He had just enough time to see the statuesque silhouette of Oliver lift surprisingly gracefully from his horse, before he disappeared through a wave of steam and a Titan's bellow. Then they were in the thick of it, their gait having to slow to a dangerously halting half-canter, half-hop as they dodged and jumped over rubble.

Jean gritted his teeth. He looked left again. The fog parted briefly, stirred by what he thought was the swing of a Titan's hand but turned out to be Fhalz arcing over their heads, back the way they'd come, his line anchored in the chest of the roaring five-meter class. The window of clear air enabled him to see the Titans right themselves in a line, presumably still looking for Baena and her singing that was alternately muffled, cast about, and amplified by the fog.

Jean watched in awe as Oliver soared upward and then contorted his body, firing another line, to take himself behind the Titans in incredibly close quarters, both blades drawn and held parallel to one another. It was Mercedes' move; Jean had seen it hundreds of times before. Oliver – he himself travelling parallel to those still on horseback – carved powerfully into the Titan's necks one after the other, felling them like an executioner. He had to spin just once between the second and the third to remedy his angle and momentum but it too fell. The fog absorbed them again.

Dipping his head back down to streamline himself, Jean continued to lead them forward – it was growing a little clearer as the dust settled. They leapt over a pile of freshly-fallen brick and mortar, and they were through it. Jean increased their speed back to a gallop. The gate was less than a couple of streets away and he hoped the bridges that crossed the moat-like defensive trenches were still intact. There were certainly no whole buildings, now – merely piles of half-rotten wood, stone and crumbled tile, dead trees – and accordingly, he worried about the Jaguars. Looking behind him, he saw Julia and Eve fan out a little behind him; the riderless horses trailed them.

_Fuck, where are they?_ he frowned, glancing between his surroundings and the settling dust- and steam-cloud behind them.

"Dodge!" Eve yelled.

The three of them did so as a ten-meter heaved itself at them, making the horses whinny and scatter but continue moving forward. He heard the Titan growl, followed by lines retracting, and craned his neck to see all three of the Jaguars using it as an anchor to bring themselves forward over the otherwise flat terrain. Baena and Oliver had jumped from its shoulders, disengaging one line as they fired another at the remains of the gate housing.

"Keep going! We're almost there!" Baena yelled as she sailed overhead.

"Bridge open to the right!" Oliver added.

Jean however, first looked behind him again. He saw Fhalz finish off the raging ten-meter and fire a line at the Wall, just in time to snatch himself out of the way. Satisfied, Jean faced front again. They raced over yet another huge dark, mottled footprint.

The Jaguars flew through the gate first, attacking and defending against more shadows. Jean curved right, the thundering of the horses' hooves at his back. He watched with as Sabine, Mercedes' horse, sprinted ahead of him with her head held high and her glossy mane tossing wildly around her head, unafraid. He smiled.

"Whoa! Age before beauty, sonny!" Julia – or rather, was it Bashka – raced to join Sabine. Julia was smiling too, and she threw her head back and laughed. They clattered over the wide-planked bridge closest to the right-hand Wall and onto the bare earth on the other side that formed the mouth of the gate.

Jean let exhilaration overtake him; his heart was in his throat and he was laughing too, despite himself. The outside – he was finally going to see what lay outside of the Walls. His horse's hooves hammered on the bridge and then pounded the dirt. The broken gate with its scorched stone surrounded him. And then, like a shroud that had been over him his entire life had been lifted, they were through to the other side.

* * *

Too dark for them to make out the Burning Titan's footprints beyond the first few leading them west outside of Wall Maria, the group had taken shelter in a narrow cave. Eve, having been the only one among them apart from Julia who'd been outside the Walls, had directed them to it based on memories of her travels – Julia had confirmed them based on her own, and Fhalz in turn had provided a summary of the surrounding area based on his memorization of a map Julia had given him and Mercedes. Although initially skeptical of and then awed by Fhalz's ability, Jean had rapidly put it aside – he was _outside_.

Although he'd tried to sleep, trying to let the dancing shadows cast on the cave's roof from the fire hypnotize him, Jean arose and picked his way to the cave's mouth. He held a hand above him and crouched a little to avoid hitting his head, trailing his hand over the sheer, jagged planes of salmon-colored stone. Julia sat on the edge overlooking the slight drop that hung them over the small, stone-filled river winding its way to the horizon.

He wished he could share this view with everyone – his friends, his comrades, his mother, Marco, Mercedes. Everyone deserved to see this, he realized, and insodoing understood why Commander Erwin did all he had to do to fight for that right.

Jean stood there with Julia in silence for what felt like forever, drinking in the sounds of the water rushing through its bed, the hoots of night birds. The moon soared above them, higher and clearer than he ever thought possible. Trees sighed contentedly, like his soul, and though he could see the idle shapes of Titans it was easier to ignore them. Although in of itself, nothing was radically different from what he'd encountered inside the Walls, it was as though he was seeing it anew, or waking from a dream, or comparing a painting to the real thing. Maybe it was the air, or the light. Everything was beautiful, raw, and free. Of course Mercedes had been born out here.

"West," uttered Julia.

Jean looked down at her. She continued to stare at the plains scattered with forest. Even as the firelight behind them haloed her silvering hair, the moonlight in front of them painted crescents in her eyes, smoothing her wrinkles into faintness until he could glimpse how she must have looked when she was young.

"It's headed west," she said to herself. "Why do I get the feeling I know where it's going?"

Jean frowned. "Where?"

Julia didn't respond for a minute. Then she shook her head, re-crossed her legs and brought her rifle across her lap, as if for comfort. "Never mind. We can't know for sure so there's no point speculating."

"Your ranch," he said for her.

Julia's mouth parted, her eyes distant and sad. "The House of Heaven." She continued in a whisper, still talking to herself more than to him, "Wouldn't that be funny – if that walking nightmare, the hell that we were so sure couldn't be real, becomes the thing to finally lead us out here, to the House of Heaven. Wall – or cave, now – to sky. Leading _me_ back into a memory that seemed to have become myth; but leading _you_ from the half-measures, the draft of your life, into clarity. Old world for new, dream for reality, reality for dream."


	8. Chapter 8: Collapse

**Chapter 8: Collapse**

Mercedes awoke after a sharp jab of pain shot up from her leg into her side, straining her still-sore ribs. Opening her eyes groggily, she realized she must have rolled onto her wound in her sleep, and forced herself to return to her back.

The window to her right was a sheet of pale orangey-pink, but barely any of it came into the room. Evening, then. She was warm; uncomfortably warm, to the point that she was drenched in sweat. Her throat was parched and her muscles were weak – despite being propped up on pillows she felt like something half-fluid, half-gas had collected in her throat and lungs and was making breathing a chore. Her eyelids were heavy. There was a strange, unpleasant, overpowering woody smell clogging her nose but she couldn't coral her thoughts enough to identify it.

_Where am I?_ she struggled to remember. Everything felt hazy. _I must still be at the ranch. Marco…_ she cast her blurry gaze around the room, but there was no sign of him.

However, the door was cracked, and her delirious mind thought she could see the words she heard slipping through it, like ribbons, toward her, floating above her like a canopy.

"I'll return soon," an unfamiliar voice was saying.

"Soon? What…what about Mercedes?" Marco's. Who was he talking to?

"Keep her sedated – that's essential."

Mercedes tried to frown, but didn't quite have the energy.

The unfamiliar male voice continued, "I also need to confer with the others."

"The others?" Marco asked warily, as if for her.

"Of course," the voice chuckled, but did not expound.

Her already-ragged breath caught in her throat, and her heart beat faster. Though adrenaline had already begun to stir in her veins, it wasn't quick enough for her liking. She was in danger. They'd sedated her, but how? She looked around again, and spotted the candle burning in the oil diffuser on the dresser – she remembered it from childhood, when Julia had put lavender oil in it to help her sleep at night – that had to be it, but she wasn't smelling lavender.

_Think, what oil is it?_ she commanded of herself. She swallowed, stifled a cough, tried to get her body to move. The easiest thing, since she could quite sit upright, was to roll onto her bad leg again, and she grimaced.

"Just be patient a little longer, Marco," the other voice said, "and all will become clear. There are a few things we need to do before we can go back to the Wall. You do want to find your friend, don't you?"

"Well, yes…"

"Just as I want to keep Mercedes safe," he added. "So we're on the same page. We want the same thing. But you know that."

There was a pause, and Marco responded quietly, "Yes, of course."

"This is the beginning of a beautiful future."

Mercedes' breaths were shuddering and deep as she tried to both coordinate her body and stifle sounds and feelings of pain. She was on her stomach, now, trying to lower her foot to the floor. She had to get to that oil burner.

"I'll return soon," the voice repeated before one set of heavy footsteps reverberated down the hall.

She slipped off the bed onto her knees on the floorboards, half hanging onto the mattress and half leaning against it for support – the sudden shift to being upright caused nausea to flood through her body and her vision to tilt and swim. Her right leg, as well as refusing to cooperate, burned because of the stretching of its raw skin, protesting how it was folded beneath her. But still Mercedes tried to hold her head up, tried to lean her body across the gap between bed and dresser that seemed like a canyon rather than three or four feet.

She was so weak. So weak it felt like her bones had been pounded to dust, and she hated it. She hadn't felt like this since she was a child. And it was so hot – her clothes were stuck to her, sweat pouring off her though she wasn't sure how she had any water left to give, so maybe she was sweating blood without realizing. She was also fairly sure she hadn't had a fever this high since she was a child, either. It was sapping her of everything – sweat, blood, energy, bone, coherent thought – and replacing it with the stench of valerian.

It was a struggle to raise her arm, and thus it was no surprise when Mercedes felt exhaustion sweep over her and push her eyes back into her head. A moment later, she collapsed.

* * *

Marco rushed into the bedroom at the noise, and found Mercedes crumpled motionless on the floor.

"What're you doing, 'Cee?" he exclaimed. Had she really tried to get out of bed? Had she heard his conversation with Two Swords?

He carefully scooped her up in his arms and put her back onto the bed. As his hands drew away over the damp sheets, sticky with her sweat, he frowned. She seemed to have been running a fever for a while now, and he wasn't convinced it had nothing to do with the oil he'd been ordered to burn. Marco looked at it, and the reflection of its steam fluttering into the air above its plain brown clay dish. He at least knew that fevers were generally productive in adults, and was reducing it preferable to putting her in pain again?

He ran a hand over her forehead, pushing back the wayward strands of her hair that had stuck there. He did the same to those that laced themselves over her neck and collar, pushing them back with his fingertips, trying to comb them away and onto the pillow. "After I get you some more water, I'll rebraid your hair," he said. "Should probably check your bandages, too."

Marco plucked her glass from the nightstand, in the process noticing the flowers he'd placed there a few days ago beginning to fade, and left the room. He'd felt in a constant state of anxiety since Two Swords had been here, but now that he had left again he wasn't as relieved as he thought he'd be. Their earlier conversation had put him on edge, particularly given Two Swords' random questions about Jean and Mercedes' graduation rankings the previous day. What was he going to confer with 'the others', presumably his superiors, about? What did any of that have to do with their return to the Wall? And why did he suddenly seem to have a personal interest in Mercedes' wellbeing?

* * *

They hovered at the treeline, looking over the silver silk of the pasture covering the hill on which the ranch stood. Their horses grumbled and snorted quietly; at their feet was the black, burnt edge of a giant footprint. The night was clear, its edge cutting into the treetops at a stark line like the blade of a sword, yet the house was dark, like a square paperweight anchoring its surroundings. Jean felt pulled toward it – what it no doubt contained held a gravity for him like nothing else. Beside him, he watched Julia's expression morph from dismay at having been right, to nostalgia, to determination. Jean tried to steel himself, mostly for the benefit of the others. He had to lead them.

On the other side of him, Eve uttered, "You remember my warning?"

He nodded. Slowly, like a palm opening, a plan came to him – the naturalness of it was stunning, but he welcomed it. As the six of them hovered there on the precipice of shadow and light, ambiguity and clarity, past and future, he focused on the house and murmured, "Fhalz – I need you and the Jaguars to establish a perimeter on the outside of the house. Eve – I need you on the roof." He heard her start to object, and cut her off, "Julia and I will go inside. If the Burning Titan really is someone I used to know, I'm sure you can all understand why I need to be the first one to see it. We'll call for backup if it's needed." He paused, heard no further objections. "Let's go."

* * *

The house was deathly quiet that night. Marco had tried to curb his anxiety – over whether to stay, or to take Mercedes, no matter her condition, and run – by returning to the overgrown garden at the back of the house to gather fresh flowers. The new bouquet of dark violet, bell-shaped blooms with speckled throats stood in the short vase next to him on the counter while he finished washing the sap from his hands in the kitchen sink.

_What should I do? I might put her in danger if I try to move her now, but…she may be in danger if we stay here. And I have no idea when exactly to expect Two Swords – usually he's so precise…_

He was startled by a loud _thump_ above him – the bedroom where Mercedes slept. Marco immediately darted around the open hearth with its low fire and down the hall, bolted up the stairs and down the next hall. In the bedroom, yet again he found Mercedes slumped on the floor beside the bed, shaking as if the moonlight falling through the window onto her, veiling her like a bride, made her cold. His anxiety was replaced by a yearning and a sorrow.

Marco knelt in front of Mercedes. He reached out and held her face still with both hands, desperate to stop her trembling. She was hot to the touch; her fever was dangerously high, stealing her strength and the fire that usually danced in her eyes, and he didn't know how to stop it. Her head attempted to fall back against the edge of the mattress and her dry mouth parted; her breath rasped in her throat and no amount of water seemed to help. He knew it wasn't her physical pain that was causing this – had it ever been?

"'Cee, please. Come back. It's Marco. Please," he begged. "I need you here."

His mind grasped at his dreams for comfort – their future together and all the joys it contained – but it was as if they were locked in a glass case; a barrier put up by Mercedes herself as she slipped farther and farther away from him. He'd tried to unlock the case without success. Now he wanted to break in. But how? Why was nothing he did ever enough?

Marco blinked back the sudden rise of tears, but they spilled down his cheeks nonetheless. His eyebrows rose and pinched. "Dearest," he whispered, ventured, craning his head to try to catch her eye. "Why won't you let me in? Can't you see – all I ever wanted was to help you, comfort you, make you happy…"

Though he stroked her face, she still blinked back at him lazily, her gaze unfocused. The smell of the oil diffusing into the air was stifling and mocking. He couldn't be sure she even heard him, now. Couldn't be sure of the last words she'd said to him, or the last time she seemed to truly see him.

"What…what should I do," he choked, bowing his head to try to control himself. He was shaking now, too.

Like her, his dreams seemed to be unraveling. They were replaced by memory of her calling out Jean's name, her screams echoing through the house and in his bones, how she was slipping away from him the harder her tried to hold onto her. He couldn't lose his reality again, and he seemed about to.

"No. No, no," he repeated over and over, looking up again. "'Cee."

Despite staring straight ahead, Mercedes seemed to be looking through him. After everything he'd done – after coming back from the dead, even – he was still just a ghost to her. Her breathing was heavy, too, as if she was in her last moments. Now that he'd returned to the land of the living was she obliged to leave it? Perhaps, he ached to think, they were destined to forever be in different worlds.

Marco let out a strangled cry that buckled his body. He felt crippled, desperate. He couldn't let go. He couldn't let her go. He couldn't.

He kissed her for the first time as if it was the last time, hoping to pour something of himself into her to quench her thirst, anchor her here, call her back. He could taste her, however little her mouth yielded to his, and it was the realest thing he'd felt since he'd walked through the fire. All the stars in the world falling to earth; a long-kept secret unfurling in his heart; a single but fatal bite of fruit; the smell of plums.

"Get your hands off her!" a half-familiar voice yelled.

Footsteps charging into the room, a well-placed kick to his shoulder. Marco fell limply away from Mercedes, still too lost in the idea of having lost her to retaliate. He fell onto his back, nearly hitting his head on the nightstand, and a body was landing on top of him, grabbing the collar of his shirt and tugging him upward, another fist ready to strike him…and freezing.

It was Jean.

Marco felt himself weaken even more. It all made too much sense. He wanted to lose himself in a delirious, endless fever like Mercedes had – the night terrors seemed preferable to the awful mixture of relief and bitterness he felt at seeing his friend again.

_My friend…and you were here for her…_

"Marco?" Jean gasped. His grip on Marco's shirt was released and his raised fist sank. He fell to one side against the dresser, and that hand now rose to cover his mouth. The fire that had been in his eyes was dying under the hand of a strong wind. The face that had been so furious, so much older than Marco remembered, was now contorted in disbelief and outrage. It was the outrage that Marco couldn't help but focus on, and explained all too well the quick glance Jean made at Mercedes.

_It was always going to be her,_ Marco realized. _Always._ He felt something stab him, and had to sit up slowly and look down to make sure it wasn't real. Unfortunately, his shirt remained white; nothing was there.

"Is it really you?" Jean asked. He shook his head. "No, no you…you were dead. I told them you were dead – that it couldn't be you. And you…" he looked back at Mercedes, back at Marco. His hand dropped. His already stern mouth stitched itself together into a trembling, thin dart. Tears – of anger or gratefulness, Marco couldn't be sure – rapidly built in his eyes, and Marco felt his own watering in return. Jean's hand now reached out for Marco, but only slightly, and only briefly, and dropped. Marco stared at this failing, noting Jean's bruised, cracked knuckles.

"It's me, Jean," Marco whispered in despair. "I'm…" How could he even hope to begin? "I'm glad you're alive." He tried to smile, wanted to smile, but couldn't.

"This isn't happening," Jean intoned.

Every word Jean spoke was another bone ripped out of Marco's body. He wanted to curl beside the motionless Mercedes, who had slipped onto her side on the floor, and wait for death. Instead, he hung there in that tiny space on a line, waiting for the slaughter just as Mercedes had waited – only, his line reached much farther back in time and memory, to anchor itself in a friendship abruptly and irrevocably arrested. Because, because…

"How could you?"

Because it was over. It was over – what dreams he'd had, what chance there'd been to run, to hold her, to start again even amid the burning of the world.

Marco shrugged helplessly, looking at Mercedes, "I…" he began, but pressed his lips firmly shut. _I loved her. That's how._ His heart, even if his mouth could not, smiled sadly.

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** *sniff* So I wrote that last part with My Chemical Romance's 'The Light Behind Your Eyes' playing in the background, and now everything is terrible.


	9. Chapter 9: Honesty

**Chapter 9: Honesty**

"Why are you drugging my child?" Julia said more quietly than she had intended – the anger boiling inside her made her words hiss out between her teeth like steam, scalding her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

Her eyes as well as her rifle were trained on the stranger – the one Jean had called Marco. The one she had heard speaking lovingly, the one she had seen kiss her granddaughter. He had looked at her in alarm and though all reason made her recognize that he was genuinely confused by her accusation, she couldn't help but direct all her pent-up outrage at him. Her hands shook; her finger ran back and forth over the smooth brass loop of the trigger guard, wavering between caution and decision. He looked like a child – a heartbroken child.

"I don't understand. Drugging her?" he said. "Why would I?"

Julia forced herself to breathe and as if to make room for the air, tears fell from her eyes. She looked at Mercedes – her dear, sweet girl, the pride and joy of her life, lying broken and catatonic in her mother's clothes on the floor beside the bed she'd been born in, as if time had advanced in the blink of an eye and not allowed her to get any farther out of this room; as if Julia had failed not only to pull her from Amaranta's womb but from this house, this memory of a life. It rooted Julia to the spot like her veins had struck down through her feet and the house into the ground – a bolt of fluid scarlet lightning.

"Valerian," she grated, "you're burning oil of valerian and god knows what else. You're sending her into a coma!" She aimed, and shot the oil burner – pottery shards exploded everywhere as did, she felt, her heart, and a hole was shot in the wall. Though Jean and Marco jumped, Mercedes still did not stir. She heard Eve scrambling overhead on the roof.

"What have you done, Marco?" Jean seemed to have come round again and was on his knees, grabbing Marco's arm.

Marco shook his head furiously, "I didn't know! I didn't know what was in the oil, I just –"

"If you didn't know what's in it then why are you burning it?" Jean demanded.

But Julia didn't care. Not at this moment. Her child was still lying there, half-dead. She dropped her rifle and stumbled forward, knocking the two young men out of the way, and heaved at Mercedes with all her strength to lift her back onto the bed. "Get out!" she was screaming shrilly. "Both of you get out!"

"Julia," Jean said, "what are you going to do? What's wrong with her? Let me –"

"No!" she snapped. She thought of the way Jean had tackled Marco and the problem that had been so crudely uncovered – an unexpected and untimely rivalry between friends for the love of one woman – and reminded her of Léon and Alejandro, Amaranta between them. She had no patience for that repetition of history. Not now. She wanted them both out of her sight. "I dragged her once into this world; I can fucking drag her back." The sense of purpose fueling a practical plan of action, her anger was beginning to channel itself. "Get me Baena – no," she reconsidered, her broader awareness of the dynamic of those present resurfacing, "Fhalz. I do not want either of you near Mercedes until I am satisfied."

"Satisfied with what?" Marco croaked.

"That not only is she out of danger but that you both have got whatever it is out of your systems," Julia said. She limped to the nearest window and threw it open and, using the bed as support, quickly hobbled toward the others.

"Then – then you don't think I…" Marco continued.

"Unfortunately no, and that worries me more," she said, realizing it as the words tumbled out of her mouth. "You are a victim as much as she is."

"Who are you?"

_Who am I?_ The small window of patience and sympathy in Julia's mind closed even as she threw open one that was in front of her. "Leave us!" Something much darker and bitterer burst inside her, like a capsule of poison. She couldn't stop her words or her tears. "The love of a fool and a soldier has brought her nothing but pain. I have no need for either of you."

There was quiet, apart from the faint, alarmed calls of those still outside and footsteps – presumably Eve's – downstairs. Julia opened the last window – the one beside the rocking chair that both Léon and Amaranta would sit in to rock Mercedes to sleep as an infant – and stumbled back to the bed. Upon seeing the two young men staring at her in hurt shock, more hot tears made their way into her eyes and her mouth kneaded itself. She shook. "Get out!" she burst, but there was sadness in her voice now.

Jean was the first to leave; his footsteps were heavy and angry. Perhaps because of this, Marco followed, casting back a last glance at Mercedes. Julia heard Eve calling and Jean screaming back at her, but couldn't make out their words. She refocused on Mercedes.

"My darling girl," she moaned, her chest heaving with the effort of keeping sobs down. Her forehead hurt from the heaviness of her frown. She made her way around the bed, back to Amaranta's – no, Mercedes' – side, and ran a shaking hand repeatedly down her damp, warm arm half in comfort and half in fear. "It'll be all right now – Granna's here. Granna's here." She sniffed loudly. "Come back to us. My sweet baby, come back to us," she pressed her other hand to Mercedes' damp crown and leaned over, resting her forehead against hers. The fear she'd felt earlier was back, riddling her logic with holes. It wasn't just Mercedes lying in this bed – it was her sons, her husband, her baby daughter – all of them that she'd laid to rest. "You're all I have left – don't leave me here alone," she whispered.

Footsteps and the rattling of maneuver gear grew closer and closer, but Julia did not move. It came through the doorway and stopped. "Ms Julia?" Fhalz asked. "Oh god – what…" he exhaled loudly.

Oddly, his fear seemed to form a tourniquet for her own. She leaned upright and after a couple of calming breaths, turned to him and said, "She'll be all right, Fhalz. She just has a lot of sedatives and other junk in her system that I need to draw out of her in order to help her wake up. I need you to be my legs, and get some things for me. Don't stop for questions from anyone downstairs."

* * *

Jean had to shut it out. He needed to get out of that house. He needed to shut himself down – for how long he wasn't sure – however long it took to recover from what he'd seen. He strode swiftly past Eve, Baena and Oliver convening in the dark front foyer, ignoring their questions and demands, through the stifling air and breaking out into the cool expanse of night. His mind spun. He had to shut it out, shut all of it out.

"Jean, stop," Marco said as he followed him out the front door.

Jean kept walking, though Marco's voice – Marco's voice! of all voices! – was trying to reel him back into reality like a line retracting. He had to shut him out. It was the only way –

"Jean! Please!" Marco's hand fell on his shoulder – a hand that shouldn't have existed, that shouldn't be here, that shouldn't have touched her.

Jean snapped; he whirled around and struck away Marco's hand. He didn't look away from his friend's sad, desperate eyes as he struck again, this time at Marco's jaw. Marco let the blow land, just as he let the others – Jean grabbed and punched at him several times until they'd both fallen and he was straddling Marco and beating him into the ground. He was growling out his anger, almost howling like a person possessed. He hadn't felt such a blind fury since he was a trainee. Only this time, he wasn't sure exactly what the source of the anger was – anger that Marco had kissed Mercedes or kidnapped her to begin with, anger that he was the Burning Titan, or that he'd left him to begin with and was now confusing it with a twisted gratefulness that he was alive. He was crying.

"Whoa, Jean! Stop!" Baena was calling. Footsteps headed their direction but halted nearby.

Still Marco's face was resigned; he did not retaliate.

Eventually Jean did indeed stop, but his hands seized Marco's blood-splattered button-up and shook him. "Why would you do this?" Jean groaned. "Why aren't you defending yourself? Why was this the way you chose to come back? Why, Marco? Why would you do this?" His head bowed to his chest as his body shook with the adrenaline coursing through it. He collapsed on his hands and knees to one side.

Marco carefully sat up, then, despite his bleeding and swollen face, and wordlessly embraced Jean. At first Jean thrashed in retaliation, trying to buck him away, but Marco held him fast. Jean struggled for another minute or two, wanting to strike him again and feel all manner of the ugly things he was supposed to continue to feel – but then, he felt a weakness, a helplessness, creep into him. His struggles slowed and the confused, sorrowful and grateful ache in his body deepened, sharpening his cries. Then they stopped altogether. He embraced the forgiving body of his friend that should be dead, hungering for a sliver of that very forgiveness for himself.

"Marco…" he sobbed. His shirt bundled beneath his fist. "Why?"

"Because I wanted to protect you both," Marco said. "I did what I had to do because I was promised that I could keep you and 'Cee safe. It was worth it to me then and I'd do it again. But…" his grip loosened for a moment, "if I had known that you…love her, I wouldn't have touched her. I wouldn't have disrespected you by doing that – and before you say it, how were you supposed to know that my feelings for her would endure even after death? Everything you did was fair, but not me – I bucked the rules. You have every right to hate me."

Jean wanted to hate him for what he'd done – it was the logical thing to do. But the truth was…he could never hate Marco. No matter how much he wanted to. Jean swallowed. "You bastard," he said. His heartrate was slowing back down. He was still struggling to process everything he thought and felt about the entire situation, but like he'd done with Mercedes back out on the road oh so long ago, he'd spent his venom. He felt tired more than anything, now, and desperate to get back to Mercedes' side. What was done was done.

"Call me whatever you want. But please know I'm on your side. Always have been, always will be."

Jean thought back to Trost burning, the ruined gates. He wasn't so sure about Marco's statement, but at least now he had the wherewithal to try to gather more information before casting judgment. He swallowed again and leaned away from Marco, who let him. Marco wasn't smiling – his expression was one of caution and guilt, as if detecting Jean's next words. "Then why breach the Walls? Why poison Mercedes?"

"As I said, I was ordered to. I agreed because they allowed me to retrieve the two of you – I just couldn't find you at first. As for Mercedes," Marco looked away. "I didn't know what was in the oil. I was told to use it. If I'd known…I would have taken her and run again while we had the chance."

As though of its own accord, Jean's brain was already latching onto the next perceived threat. "Who ordered you? Who gave you the oil? What do you mean 'while you had the chance'?"

Marco looked at him again. Surprisingly, there was a small amount of fear there. "The man who told me how to get here – he goes by the alias Two Swords. I used to trust him because he helped me, but now…now I'm really not so sure."

Jean frowned more deeply. He held Marco's gaze a little longer, detecting the honesty in them – the horrible honesty that told him this whole ordeal was far from over.


	10. Chapter 10: Oliver

**Chapter 10: Oliver**

"What in the _world_ is going on?" Baena yelled. She gestured at Marco, "_Who_ are you," her arm swung up to the house, "_what_ is going on with 'Cee," her arm swung back to Jean, "and why the _fuck_ were you beating him up?"

Before Jean or Marco could answer, Eve had taken a few steps past Baena and was drawing her blades. "It's him, isn't it? He's the Burning Titan," she growled.

Jean wiped at his damp face and scrambled to his feet as Eve approached. "Stand down, Eve," he growled. He held out his arms to shield Marco.

"No fucking deal. I warned you, Jean."

"The only one to ever kill him would be me!" Jean yelled, and though it made Eve paused for the slightest of seconds, her eyes narrowed again and she continued forward. "We've got more important things to worry about."

"I can't let another one of them – the worst of them – just walk away!"

Eve took a run at him, but Jean did not draw his blades. He crouched, one shoulder pitched forward as if bracing for impact. One hand was raised behind him like he was also keeping Marco at bay. But as Eve deftly ducked and span past him, her blades met one other – Oliver's. Both Jean and Eve stumbled a little in shock – they'd never seen Oliver move so fast. Eve's blades sheared off Oliver's, and with a flick he pushed hers back, dropping his own in favor of wrapping his large hands around her tiny wrists, keeping them aloft and out of harm's way.

"What're you doing, Oliver?" Eve demanded through gritted teeth. "Let me go!"

Jean turned on his heel and took a couple of steps away, as did Marco. The last thing he'd expected was for Oliver to interfere even though he was glad the bull of a teenager had. He watched Oliver's face frown down at Eve.

"Death wish, much?" Oliver said. "If you managed to cut him, he might transform. Or even if you didn't, he might. But don't you think that if he was our enemy Jean – or 'Cee – would have killed him already? Or he would have killed us already. We're still standing here." He lowered Eve's angrily-shaking arms but kept her at a safe distance. "Besides, didn't you hear anything that was said? There's something far bigger going on. Personal vendettas don't matter right now."

"They don't matter?" Eve repeated. Her eyes were wide. "Don't –" she looked away briefly, then back again, "This whole business was started by a personal vendetta! You heard him – the reason the Walls are breached is because of a personal vendetta. The reason we're out here is because of a personal vendetta!"

"You're confusing want with need, and what came first," Oliver argued. "He didn't _want_ to breach the Walls. Someone else wanted that, and preyed upon what he really wanted – 'Cee and Jean – in order to get it. We've all had to do things we didn't want to do to protect those we love. You've done it, too. You do it to this day." He leaned a little closer. "Why should we shed blood if we don't have to? If we have the chance to fix this without losing a life, then why not take it? Are you really going to let an old slight – an outmoded principle – ruin humanity's chances? That'd be quite the thing to live with forever."

Jean didn't think he'd heard Oliver speak this much in his entire time knowing him. He'd always known him to be quiet and sensitive, shy even, and lacking in self-confidence to the point that he often wondered why Mercedes had picked him for her squad. To hear him talk like this was unprecedented and a glance at Baena told him he wasn't wrong to think that way. She, however, had a small and proud smile on her face.

After a moment, Oliver said, "Jean's right." He released Eve's wrists, picked up his dropped blade and sheathed it, but didn't move from between her and Marco. "We need to be focusing on the root cause of all this manipulation rather than its symptoms. You're playing into their hands if you do otherwise. And you're better than that."

The awkward silence became thick and cold after that. Jean fully expected Eve to attack again, but after a minute or two of strangely silent fuming Eve sheathed her blades and walked away with one more angry glance at Oliver and an even angrier one past him at Marco. She called back, "I'm going to round up the horses."

Jean watched her go, hoping that Oliver's words would sink in – they'd certainly given him a little more confidence in his half-chosen course of action. He was distracted when Baena walked over to them.

"Good job, Ol'," she smiled and squeezed his huge shoulder.

Oliver's face wavered and fell into uncertainty once more. He deflated a bit and watched Eve go, rubbing the back of his neck. "Was that really all right? I think she hates me, now," he said gloomily.

"She'll be all right, just give her some time to diffuse. You said what needed to be said," Baena reassured him. "We're proud of you."

Oliver nodded to himself and breathed deeply in and out a couple of times as though standing up to Eve had taken far more effort than fighting Titans. Jean felt the ghost of a smile tug at his lips – he had seen in Oliver what Mercedes had seen, and had to marvel at her intuition and faith. He glanced up at one of the frontmost upstairs windows, beginning to itch again to get back to her but at the same time, recalling the teary-eyed fury with which Julia had cast them out.

"Thank you for defending me," Marco said, bringing Jean's eyes back down. Marco was holding out a hand to Oliver and he was taking it cautiously.

"So, you're Marco," Baena said. She took was cautious – her smile weaker but still present. She didn't offer her hand or her name just yet, Jean couldn't help but notice.

"Yes," Marco said.

"We're Mercedes' squadmates," Baena said. "I think I understand why you did what you did, but as I'm sure you can see not everyone is going to accept that as a valid reason. People are dying as we speak."

"I know," Marco frowned, his head lowering.

Baena craned her head to try to look him in the eye, her smile stronger despite the subject, "But, if you tell us everything you can, maybe we can help. Maybe we can even stop it altogether."

Jean suddenly understood why Julia had kept Fhalz inside – he wouldn't have been this calm or mediatory. Baena and Oliver were that type. Mercedes definitely got her intuition from her grandmother. He suddenly felt naïve and clumsy.

"Jean."

Jean came back out of his thoughts at his name.

"I'm sorry," Marco said.

He felt a resurgence of the conflict of emotions he'd felt earlier, but it was distant – like he was looking at the maelstrom inside his heart from the outside, through a window. He took in his friend's tired, wizened face that had lost much of the youthful optimism he'd remembered it having. Even the sparkle in his dark eyes had dulled. Jean hadn't thought much about what Marco must have gone through in the time he'd been away. It'd never occurred to him that villains – or supposed ones, at least – endured suffering of any kind. But Marco…Marco wasn't a bad guy in a cape in some dark tower like in a storybook. Julia had been right – he was a victim as much as any of them. A pawn.

"I am, too," Jean said.

"What's going on with 'Cee? Please someone tell me. Why won't Julia let us up there?" Baena bounced on her heels.

"You said something about burning oil? About poison?" Oliver added with a deep frown.

Marco began quietly, "I thought I was giving her something to help her pain, as Two Swords instructed." He shifted feet. His face took on an intimate kind of pain that made Jean uncomfortable because of how familiar it was. "Ever since we got here she'd been drifting in and out of consciousness, barely speaking, barely hearing me. She'd start crying and screaming, she'd wake with night terrors. I didn't know what to do to help her." Marco glanced up at Jean and then equally uncomfortably looked away, as if detecting that he was getting too close. "I did what I could for her injuries but I don't think they're why she is the way she is, even without that oil." His hands rose and kneaded into his scalp as he looked at the ground, "I didn't realize I was putting her into a coma!"

Jean swallowed. "Hey. You didn't know. And we're going to get her right again." Although it was still difficult to digest, to string the words together, he added, "If you hadn't saved her at the Sina gate, she might be dead right now."

Marco blinked a couple of times, seeming to take Jean's words to heart or at least try to. He looked up at him after a moment. "That woman – who is she? I thought she was going to kill me."

Jean let himself smirk. "I thought so too, for a minute there. Julia. She's 'Cee's grandmother."

Marco tried to smile. "That explains it." As Jean had done a few minutes ago, Marco looked up at the upper windows of the house, even leaned toward it ever so slightly.

"Julia's taking care of her?" Baena asked.

"Yeah," Jean said, trying not to pay too much attention to Marco. "We'll just have to wait."

"Let's go inside, then. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm starving," said Baena. "And it seems like you've got a lot to fill us in on, Marco."

The four of them turned to go back to the house and its gaping mouth of a front door.

Marco seemed to remember himself. "Two Swords left a few hours ago and said he'd be back 'soon'. Normally he tells me a specific time range, like 'tomorrow evening' or 'in two days' – this is different and it unsettles me."

"We'll be ready," Jean said even though he really wasn't sure. He looked around for Eve but couldn't see her.

As they stepped onto the threshold he heard Oliver whisper to Baena, "What're we going to tell Fhalz?"

"The truth. In pieces," said Baena. "Don't worry, I'll handle him."

* * *

The sky was turning gray outside, like ink being watered down. The group had fallen into silence; even Baena had stopped futilely questioning Fhalz as he ran up and down, back and forth between the kitchen and pantry under the stairs. Now they sat in the dusty living room, alternately pacing and sitting motionless.

Marco stared out of the window into the half-buried front courtyard, keeping an eye out for Two Swords. It was mostly just to have something to do, since Eve had taken it upon herself to keep watch. Now that they were all here, in fact, he felt like he'd fallen dormant, unfortunately relieved of responsibility. Even activity seemed to have been taken from him.

He barely turned his head as Fhalz came down the stairs yet again.

"Jean, Julia says you can go up to see her, now," said Fhalz.

Marco frowned. Despite himself, he turned. Fhalz was leaning tiredly against the doorway and drying his hands on a towel. Jean stood upright from where he'd leant against the fireplace, the firelight cutting into his simultaneously relieved and worried face to make him appear twice his age. Marco watched him rush through the furniture and people as if there was nothing between him and Mercedes – and the fact that he knew that feeling well made the hurt come back. The disappearing rattle of Jean's footsteps on the stairs carried Marco past the others on his way out the back door.

The overgrown garden he'd found so refreshing not so long ago spread in front of him as he stood on the back stoop – a deep pool of indigos and teals that were now somber rather than comforting. Marco stepped off and among them, wading forward, holding his hands out to graze over and through them as if the contact with something real would balance him. The farther he walked from the house, the more the pain came back; the less he had to hide it.

Out on the other side where a broken fence pronounced the beginning of the overgrown pasture, again despite himself he turned. He looked up at the window of the bedroom where he knew Mercedes lay; it was a russet-gold with candlelight against the pale blue of the eaves. He could see Jean's silhouette for just a moment before it bent over and away. Was he kissing her, Marco wondered? He looked away.

He hadn't told Jean the whole truth. He'd told Jean what he needed to hear, despite what he felt. It was what was best for everyone – to pretend. Pretend he could so easily step aside, box away what he felt. Pretend it didn't affect him to know that while he was gone, Jean and Mercedes had fallen for one another and that they couldn't do anything about the unfairness of it. He was supposed to be happy and understanding and forgiving, and no doubt like Baena said they wanted him to help them now – how was he supposed to grin and bear it – how was he supposed to watch Jean take care of her and touch her and kiss her and not feel that he should be in his place?

Marco sat on the edge of an old hay grate and put his head in his hands. He breathed deeply, trying not to feel sorry for himself but at the same time, feeling he was allowed to indulge himself just this once, at least for one night.

He thought about leaving. It was the prime opportunity, and the easiest way to atone. The easiest way to make life simpler for everyone. He felt a sting in his constricting throat that soon traveled to his eyes.

"You told him what he needed to hear, didn't you?"

Marco lifted his head and looked behind him. Oliver pushed his way through the last of the bushes and came to stand beside him. His face was unexpectedly sympathetic, but more unexpected still was the accuracy of his words.

"Jean, I mean," Oliver clarified.

Marco looked away into the still-dark sky that melted into the distant solid treeline.

After a moment's silence, Oliver continued haltingly, "It's hard. I know. You want what you want, but you have to do what's right and hope there's some reward in it later. It's brave." When Marco still didn't reply, too consumed with keeping from blurting everything out, Oliver said, "Running isn't going to make it better. You're going to have to face it at some point so it may as well be now. It won't happen overnight, but you'll be okay. And in the meantime, you can put what you feel to use. You love her, and Jean's your friend, and maybe that won't change because honestly, it's mostly out of your control – but you can control how you express it. You seem like you know that, so don't give in to the cowardice of a lesser man. Otherwise everything you've done for her is gone."

Marco took a minute to digest Oliver's words. When his throat felt more open again and the sting in his eyes had abated, he managed to have the energy to smile up at him, "You're very wise. 'Cee's lucky to have you on her squad."

Oliver folded his arms awkwardly as if realizing what he'd talked about. "I'm the lucky one to have them. Which is why I can't stand to see something like bad timing stand in the way of what a strong friendship can achieve. You've been given an opportunity – under whatever circumstances it might have been given to you, mind – to help your friends. Most don't get that chance. Why would you want to let it slip away?"

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Big shout-out as always to everyone who's read and favorited/followed! Likewise to ohtobealady and Wings of Wax for your seemingly unending support - means the world!


	11. Chapter 11: Two Swords

**A Note from the Author:** Just a reminder that Eve belongs to the awesome **Wings of Wax**, from her 'Survival' saga.

* * *

**Chapter 11: Two Swords**

Eve switched her resting weight from one leg to the other, propping her laced hands on her raised knee. The chill from the roof tile was seeping into the soles of her boots and a soft breeze brushed at her face, still warm from the earlier heated conversation.

_How can they just move on like that? No matter who Marco _was_, it doesn't change who he is _now_. Everything inside the Walls is burning because of him…who knows how many people have died in the last few days._ She looked up at the midnight-blue of the sky, scanned it and the perimeter of the trees. _Does Erwin really think we're coming back? And that we'd come back with a Titan that'd actually help? They thought Eren could help and all he did was get himself fucking kidnapped – maybe even eaten by now._

She could hear faint voices – judging by the timber, Oliver's, and one other – but then they fell quiet and the back door, behind her, opened and closed. There were faint murmurs but it was hard to tell if they were voices inside or other, outside noises playing tricks on her. But it was better to be up here than inside, pretending to agree with everyone's sentiments.

She had to admire the Carello ranch, in all honesty; even though it was still a settlement outside the Walls, the family hadn't let that deter them from picking a good siting. She wondered how long all of this had taken them, including clearing what she estimated to be around fifty acres. The house itself was situated in the front third of the cleared land on one of three main rises, with the other two being one slightly to the right of the middle third and the other at the far end, while the rest of the land sloped gracefully like the backs of the many horses that apparently roamed here once. Now that she looked, from her position above the front door she could see how the remains of the cobbled front yard trailed straight ahead into a lane bordered with soft embankments, soft now but likely much steeper when this place was occupied. She wondered if it had been to channel Titans should they ever make it this far in.

Thinking of Titans made her think of Marco again. What if Marco was lying, and he wasn't on their side? What if this Two Swords person hadn't pulled the wool over his eyes and he'd known what he was doing all along? And what if, when he came back, Two Swords brought reinforcements? What if Marco was just waiting for that eventuality?

Eve's eyes were drawn to the sudden spark of a fire in the distance, close to where they'd emerged when they arrived. She frowned, drawing her blades, but did not rise and thus present herself as a target. To her further surprise and worry the fire soon spread in a line and painted a long curve through the field, racing past the house until it coiled like a golden snake in the slopes of the pasture behind the ranch, finally stopping. She could make out the faint, dark forms of several figures just beyond the line of fire. Eve cursed.

As she turned on the ball of her foot to carefully climb down, she heard the terrified whinny of horses. One was suddenly cut short, followed by another.

_Someone's in the stables,_ she realized. _That shifter bastard's killing the horses! He wants to strand us here so he can kill us too. Then he'll have 'Cee all to himself…_

Eve jumped off the lowest part of the roof at the back of the house, crouched low and hastily crept between the house and the overgrown shrubbery toward the stable. Just before she made the dash across the gap between house and stable she paused, detecting movement to her right – Marco came into view, also running for the stables. Just as she was thinking of taking the opportunity to cut him down herself, he suddenly stumbled and his hand shot to his neck. He trudged a few more steps before dropping to his knees, and then completely onto his stomach. He didn't move.

_What the…_ Eve frowned, her mouth parting in worry. _It wasn't him. Then who..._ She swallowed and pressed her back to the stucco of the house, glancing around the corner either direction.

Another frightened neigh spurned her across the gap – over the stable's low board walls she could see the horses' shadows rearing and dancing. Eve kept low against the wall and tried to pick out the location of the intruder amongst all the noise. She could hear the house stirring. As she was about to stand up and vault over the wall, suddenly one of the horses broke down the boards of its cell near to her and sped out into the yard – Eve glimpsed a hand losing its grip on the horse's rope. She took the opportunity to dash forward, her blades raised.

One other blade met hers as she turned the corner, but it wasn't a maneuvering gear blade – it was an actual sword. The slightly curved blade parried hers and the individual – she couldn't make out his or her face – leapt back into the shadows of the stable. She growled and charged in, but abruptly felt a sharp sting at her clavicle. Eve's hand shot up as Marco's had done and snatched out the small dart. She began to feel light-headed and her vision swam, twisting the shadows and barely-lighter highlights into one another. Her muscles grew weak and she dropped into the sweet-smelling hay, and her eyes closed.

* * *

"I'll check the stables; Ol', you check round the other side. Baena stay here," Fhalz said as they jogged out of the front door.

Baena was immediately looking to their right at the rope of fire leading into the field from the forest. She squinted, trying to make out if she saw figures behind the flames.

Fhalz cursed loudly. Baena looked over to see him plucking something from his neck, and soon after wobbling on his feet. He looked at whatever it was in his hand and then he was shouting, "Baena! Get back inside!"

"What –" she began.

"Go!" he slurred and fell to his knees.

She looked around for any signs of their attacker, and noticed Oliver running back in their direction. His head twitched once, twice, and he too raised a hand to his neck. Although he tried to run for a few more paces eventually he, too, dropped. Baena turned up the collar of her jacket and her search grew more frantic – where was this coming from? Dart trajectories weren't that far, and there were no close hiding places.

_Except… _Instead of going back in the house Baena took a few more steps out of the door and fired a line at the chimney, using it to get to the roof. Once on her feet she drew her blades. Her theory had been correct.

The man that stood up from his crouched position beside a window gable threw away a blowdart pipe. Rather calmly, he drew two swords from their scabbards at his hips and paced confidently up the roof tile until he stood evenly with her on the ridge. A rifle peered over his shoulder. As light fell on his face she could see how he smiled; dark, collar-length curly hair fell into his bright eyes.

_Two Swords,_ she thought. "Who are you really?" she demanded, readying herself.

"I might ask you the same thing," he said.

_He's stalling. Don't fall for it._ Baena ran forward and hopped to the gable he'd used, jumping back at him. Their blades clashed. Although shorter than her, he had a considerable amount of strength behind his defense.

The two of them began a careful, balanced dance on the roof and it quickly became obvious to Baena that he was a better swordsman than she was. This wasn't a Titan; there wasn't much place for large slashes or any other moves that lacked delicacy. He seemed pretty confident on the terrain of the roof, as if he knew its angles by heart; maybe she'd stand a chance if his stamina wasn't as good as hers.

Two Swords' took a swipe at her belly and Baena batted it away, bobbing a little as she readjusted her footing on another gable ridge. He stabbed at her chest and she twisted to avoid it, but his other sword was sweeping low at her legs. Instinct told her to jump; when she landed she immediately kicked out at his ankle, knocking him off balance. He landed on his back with a grunt; a couple of roof tiles dislodged and clattered downward.

Baena stepped lightly after him as he rolled himself away from her, his leather coat slapping and his rifle rattling against the roof. He came up into a crouch and her blades were there, crossing under his chin as he raised his head. His eyes were a glittering blue, she realized, but otherwise, he looked awfully familiar somehow despite how certain she was she'd never seen him before in her life.

"Who are you?" she yelled again.

The corner of Two Swords' mouth was drawn up by an invisible hook into an even more frighteningly familiar smirk.

_Where have I seen that before? Someone else has that exact same smirk, just about the same face…_

Then the backs of his swords struck her ankles – hard. Baena flinched and readjusted, but a tile underneath her came loose and she lost her balance. Before she could recover she hit her head sharply on the way down and all went dark.

* * *

Jean was startled as a body fell past him on his way out of the window – he had enough time and light to determine it was Baena. The sight pushed him the rest of the way up to the roof. He had no idea what was going on other than suddenly there was fire outside and a cacophony of noise, and the others weren't responding to his shouts. He'd ordered Julia to stay with Mercedes.

He scrambled to his feet and saw a male figure about to jump down some distance away, beside the chimney. The man stopped when he saw him and turned. Jean saw two swords in scabbards at his hips and had at least half an answer.

"Another?" the man chuckled to himself. "I could have sworn I had my numbers correct. Should be another still inside, plus Mercedes, no?" His voice, undulating like the smoke and firelight behind him, was strangely pleasant and lilting, but Jean bristled at her name.

"What do you want with her? Where's Marco?" Jean commanded. Noticing the dislodged tiles, he tread carefully as he made his way up to the ridge of the roof. He drew his blades implicitly.

"You _must_ be Jean," said Two Swords, also wandering closer with even, slow steps as sure as a cat's one in front of the other along the ridge. "6th of your class. The leader-in-waiting. The prize stallion in a show that will never be staged. It's almost as though they sent you to me." Two Swords laughed to himself and came to a stop a couple of meters away from Jean.

As much as he wanted to make demands of the stranger, Jean forced himself to keep quiet and wait. He stilled his body and focused. Something about the man told him that he wasn't dealing with a sane individual. His eyes were too bright, his smile too constant, his gait too cavalier. And that was dangerous.

"You'll make a fine addition to the team, I should think, as she will once we get her back to health," Two Swords rolled his head on his shoulders. When his head fell forward again he was grinning at Jean, "Why don't you give me a closer look?" He drew his swords and plunged forward.

Jean darted to one side, reversing his grip on his blade to strike backwards as Two Swords fell past him. Two Swords parried and surprisingly agilely twisted on the edge of the eave, sidestepping another swipe from Jean. He swiped back, and Jean recoiled backward and up a few steps. The two of them made their way back up to the ridge, hunkered low and staring each other down.

Jean took a running start and jumped, his blades bearing down on Two Swords' as he soared over him. Underneath him, the older man half-knelt and span, scything first one sword and then the other diagonally upward to defend. Jean flipped to absorb the blow and landed on the other side of Two Swords, immediately countering a pair of jabs. A tile underfoot came loose and he readjusted. Two Swords took the opportunity and struck blow after powerful blow, forcing Jean to defend and move backward. Jean was reminded of the early days, when he'd sparred with Mercedes and how she'd toyed with him before moving to the offensive with crushing and agile power, like the jaguar of her family crest.

Their blades locked in the air above their heads, Two Swords pounded a knee into Jean's stomach, buckling him over. He landed another strike into Jean's wounded left shoulder. Jean fired a line into the chimney scant feet away and let himself skid down the roof out of danger; he flew away from the hip of the roof and propelled himself around the chimney. He careened toward Two Swords from above, his blades poised like the talons of an eagle. Two Swords merely locked eyes with him and stood still, waiting. He was smiling.

Jean felt his anger move into his throat as a growl and it erupted into a yell. He bore down on him and slashed – Two Swords nonchalantly stepped to one side and leaned backward out of the way – Jean's blade passed directly over his face and barely disturbed his ebony hair. Jean smiled now, too, and contorted his body to throw himself back in Two Swords' direction. Two Swords latched a hand onto the roof ridge and deliberately slid down and out of the way of the two feet Jean had intended to plant on his chest. Jean changed direction yet again and came back to land, his blade stabbing down only to barely miss Two Swords' face but still slice through his ear. Two Swords swept one blade upward and though Jean dodged, the tip scratched through his left cheek and nearly into his eye. As Jean recoiled he stepped back too far and tottered on the eave of the roof.

Two Swords grabbed him by the head, momentarily stopping his fall; he heard the swords clatter on the tile. Jean re-gripped his own blades and brought them in for the kill but before they could strike, Two Swords' forehead slammed violently into his own, and he was dropped. He couldn't feel anything before he hit the ground.

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's read and reviewed. It means a ton! Sorry for the slower updates this go round - I seem to have several irons in the fire right now. Hopefully it's worth it!


	12. Chapter 12: Resurrection

**Chapter 12: Resurrection**

Mercedes had woken at the sound of all the clamoring on the roof over her head. As the cobwebs in her head began to pull away, she realized thankfully that she could no longer smell valerian in the air, and she no longer felt the need to strip her skin off. However, the pain that whatever had been in the oil burner had taken away was creeping back.

She turned her head right at the sound of a gun being loaded. "Granna?" she whispered. "What's going on?"

Julia finished loading her rifle – at the breech, Mercedes was surprised to notice, and with more than one shot – and turned to her. "I'm glad you're awake my dear one, but I think we're under attack."

"How did you get here? Where's Marco?" Mercedes felt something stir in her – the need to get ready, to fight – but her body wouldn't respond to it.

"I rode here with your squad, Jean, and Eve. I'm not sure where any of them are." Julia rose from the rocking chair she'd placed beside the bed and handed Mercedes a glass of something green and watery. "Hurry up and drink this."

Mercedes knocked it back though it hurt to even lift her arm or swallow. It was incredibly bitter and salty. "What _is_ this?" It slid down her throat but she felt like she had to keep swallowing to get it all the way down.

"Come on," Julia was grabbing her arm, "We need to get away from the windows."

"Neither of us can walk without support," Mercedes groaned. She was trying to comply with Julia's frantic sense of urgency but she felt heavy and unfocused.

"Well fuck you've got a bad right leg I've got a bad left leg so if we strap ourselves together we'll have ourselves a complete human being," Julia hissed, "there's no time for that!"

Strangely, a knock came at the ajar door.

Julia swung around and pointed and cocked her rifle at the gap, practically dropping Mercedes in the process. Mercedes looked around for a weapon but could see none apart from the oil lamp on the dresser, which she supposed she could grab and throw in a worst-case scenario. She refocused on the slim gap between the door and its frame, and the shadow that stood there.

"I'm unarmed," came an unfamiliar man's voice. "Won't you let me in?"

"That voice…" Julia whispered. Mercedes looked up and saw her grandmother's face briefly become confused and frightened.

"I just want to see her."

Julia's face hardened; she sighted along her rifle. She shook her head once. Her voice was strong and angry as she said, "No. Who are you?"

The door parted a little.

"Don't come any closer!" Julia shrieked, but Mercedes detected an unusual amount of desperation in her voice, as if the reason Julia didn't want the man to enter was because she didn't want to see him. Despite the pain, Mercedes' body tensed and rose into a crouch on the bed on her good left leg; her hands clenched the sheets underneath her.

The door parted more.

"Stay out!" But it was Julia who took a step back, even closer to the side of the bed where Mercedes was. She was shaking and this more than anything made Mercedes afraid – she'd never known her to hesitate to take a shot.

A boot stepped over the threshold, the tattered hem of a leather coat swaying above it. Upraised, battered hands passed into the lamplight, one with the glint of a wedding ring. Another boot. The lamplight washed over an unarmed middle-aged man, maybe 5'6, dressed in traveler's clothes with two empty scabbards at his hips, tanned skin, glossy dark hair, and wild blue eyes set into a face mostly consisting of cheekbone. He was smiling at them and Mercedes couldn't determine whether it was sly, amused, or nostalgic.

More alarmingly, Mercedes also wasn't sure if it was the sourness of the drink settling in her stomach or the feeling of gradual recognition rising in her throat. She glanced at Julia.

Julia was trembling violently, clutching the rifle as if it anchored her to something invisible in the air rather than in preparation to use it. Tears were pouring down her face. "You…you were dead," she spat in a surprisingly bitter tone.

"Granna?" Mercedes found herself begging, reaching up a hand to latch onto her arm. "Who…"

Julia didn't seem to hear her. "My son…" she whispered heartbrokenly. "Léon."

The room fell silent; the three of them stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

"I've come to see my daughter," he said in a voice that resurrected all memory.

_He was guiding her foal, Sabine, around the garden as she laughed; he was throwing her into the air and catching her; he was teaching her how to read a map; he was soothing her stomachaches by feeding her mint leaves; he was calling her 'song of my heart' as he kissed her goodnight._

Mercedes felt like the thinnest sliver of a knife was working its way from her heart outward, unpicking her muscles, tendons and veins like they were little more than thread holding her body together. The fog she'd been in lifted, as though she'd been struck by lightning. Her mouth parted but nothing came out.

Her father. This – Two Swords – was her father. The man who'd coerced Marco into becoming the Burning Titan, into breaching the Walls and destroying humanity – who'd been alive all this time – was her father. Had he been behind everything else? The other shifters too? Marco had said he was just a messenger, but…

"You," Mercedes growled. Her insides felt shattered, like a flower that had lost all of its petals and leaves, and it stained her vision red. She was left with a pure, jagged core of betrayal.

Two Swords – Léon Carello, her father – focused on her. Though his smile barely altered, his eyes became sharper. He still didn't move.

Mercedes had always thought that if she were to ever see her father again, she'd overflow with happiness and gratefulness, like a piece of her, or a piece of her life of which she'd been deprived, had been restored at last. But instead, the more she looked at him, the more she thought about what he'd done, the more she seethed. Instead of relief, she felt exploited. Instead of wondering where he'd been and what he'd gone through, she wanted to know where they were – Jean, Marco, her squad, Eve. Instead of wanting his embrace and his stories, his humming that she could remember so clearly from childhood, she wanted to scream at him.

She didn't do any of that.

Julia wilted to the floor, the rifle thudding on the rug; her hands were at her sobbing mouth. Mercedes – lifted by the harness, the puppet-strings, of her anger – gritted her teeth as she rose from the bed. She took a pair of labored, fiery-pain-riddled steps, past her grandmother, heading for Léon. Léon took a tentative step toward her, his face becoming gentle, warm, holding his hands out to her.

Mercedes grabbed the rifle from the floor and slammed it with all her might into Léon's stomach, doubling him over and making him stumble. Before he could recover she knocked the butt into his temple, felling him instantly.

Her chest caved in and she stumbled a little, using the footboard of the bed and the rifle to keep herself upright. She stood over Léon, breathing heavily, and reached down to check his pulse – he was still breathing. She'd figure out what to do with him in a minute. She frowned and turned back around to Julia, who was leaning on the mattress with an expression of grim satisfaction.

After a moment, Julia said, "I love you."

She felt buoyed by her grandmother's words – they contained so much more than the single sentiment – she hadn't realized they were what she needed to hear or that they were the root of everything. "I love you too, Granna," Mercedes replied.

Mercedes gingerly lowered herself to sit on the floor beside Julia. They wrapped their arms around one another and cried.

* * *

Jean woke with a sharp pain in his head and neck, and realized he was dangling upside-down by one of his line still embedded in the chimney. He quickly and carefully righted himself and hung there for a moment, letting the blood drain back down from his head as he recalled what happened. He lowered himself to the ground and detached his line. Judging by the silence apart from the crackle of the fire in the distance, Two Swords hadn't encountered anyone else – there was a chance he was inside.

Jean staggered a couple of steps and leant against the side of the house to steady himself. He felt dizzy. In the growing light of early morning he spotted Baena's pale hair and long limbs half-in, half-out of some shrubbery; avoiding the windows, he rushed over to her.

"Baena!" he hissed. "Baena," he shook her.

Baena groaned a little and suddenly thrashed about, falling out of the bushes and making her gear clatter. She sprang into a crouch and looked wildly around her, and then up at him. She relaxed a little. "Where's that motherfucker?"

Jean shushed her. "I don't know. I think he's inside."

"You're bleeding."

He was reminded of his stinging cheek and forehead, but said, "It doesn't matter, come on." The two of them rounded the shrubbery and headed for the back door that would take them into the kitchen. "Where are the others?"

"Fhalz and Oliver are down – darts of some kind – and I'd hazard a guess to say the same happened to Eve and Marco," she said worriedly. "But if he'd wanted to kill us, he would have, so maybe he used tranquilizers or something. He hit me with the backs of his swords, for example. Why wouldn't he want us dead?"

"If he still needed us," Jean realized, and frowned more deeply.

Jean took one side of the kitchen door, and Baena the other. She reached up and gently turned the handle, and then thrust it open. Jean was inside and catching it before it could slam into the counter, Baena right behind him to close it just as gently. They fanned out, scanning the dimly-lit area. The fires in the kitchen and livingroom hearths were guttering, and fainter lights from the fires outside were playing on the walls, as if the house itself had a memory of being on fire and was telling them about it in a whisper.

They regrouped in the main foyer, where stronger light fell through the open door.

"Clear," Jean said lowly.

"Clear," Baena agreed. He watched her glance out the front door to the bodies of Oliver and Fhalz on the ground, her face pinching in worry.

"Soon," he reassured her. "But we have to prioritize."

She nodded and they rushed up the stairs.

They immediately halted at the top, however, when they nearly ran into Julia and Mercedes. The two women supported one another, but were also dragging a body between them. As what little light there was fell on their faces, Jean saw their faces were grim and tear-streaked, and their eyes were red. They dropped Two Swords' body on the landing and stood apart, Julia leaning on her rifle and Mercedes on the corner of the wall.

"Oh wow, okay," Baena immediately said, but Julia and Mercedes were silent.

Mercedes' eyes rose to meet Jean's and now he could see a strange sadness in them. It drew his hand to reach out and hold her face and she leaned into it, closing her eyes and breathing deeply out. He felt an immense surge of relief and love, and stepped close to hold her so she could feel it. When her arms wrapped around him he felt whole again.

"Baena, you can check on the others, now," Jean said. "I think we're safe."

"Got it." Baena's voice became gentler, more sympathetic, "Ms Julia, how about we go downstairs, yeah? You look like you need a sit-down. We'll come back and take care of this guy in a minute."

Julia was silent, but Jean heard Baena leading her away. Why were Julia and Mercedes so quiet? Why did they seem so upset? They'd got the bad guy, hadn't they? He felt his own exhaustion starting to set in; his brain felt fried but he knew he still had work to do and priorities to set, the first being the woman in his arms.

When the sound of Baena and Julia's footsteps died away, Jean whispered, "You okay? You shouldn't be out of bed." He gently rubbed her back and kneaded her scalp through her hair, and pressed his non-cut cheek against her crown.

"He's my father," she said, her voice muffled by his shirt.

Jean glanced down at the body by their feet.

"He's my father," she repeated.

He breathed deeply in and held her tighter, barely able to imagine what had taken place in that bedroom down the hall.

"I didn't know what else to do, so I knocked him out."

Jean couldn't help but sniff once, loudly, in amusement. It was just like her to do something like that and it was one of the many things he was discovering he loved her for. However, he also knew she wasn't good at dealing with the emotional fallout from these kinds of conflicting decisions, so he said, "You did what you had to do. It's bought us some time. We'll take care of him. You did good."

"Did I?" her voice was an ache. "Part of me doesn't want him to wake up."

"We'll handle that when it comes. Remember what I told you?"

"To let you be brave for both of us," she said. "But this…this is personal. This isn't your fight."

"If it's yours, it's mine," he intoned. "If my bravery fueled yours before, and kept you alive, know that yours fueled mine and got _me_ here alive. It's always going to be that way. There isn't any difference any longer."


	13. Chapter 13: Echoes

**Chapter 13: Echoes**

About half an hour later, a vivid dawn was breaking over the ranch to replace the fire that had traced the slopes, which had smoldered away to nothing – the figures they thought they'd seen turned out to be wooden decoys. Jean and Baena had first secured Two Swords by tying him upright in a dining chair, and then gone back outside to drag in their four friends. In the process they'd found three of their horses with their throats slit – two had died on the journey, which meant they now only had five – which meant that the journey back was going to be interesting.

Jean finished washing his face in the kitchen sink and turned off the faucet. He wiped some of the water off on the back of his hand, but was too exhausted to find a towel. He trudged back through the dining area and around the corner into the living area: they'd arranged Fhalz, Eve, Oliver and Marco side by side on the rug in front of the fireplace between the two settees. On the leftmost settee, farthest from Two Swords, reclined Mercedes with Julia sitting at her feet. The elderly woman hadn't spoken since Two Swords had arrived, and she continued to stare across the richly-colored space of her home at him as if expecting him to move.

Baena looked up from where she crouched beside Fhalz. "All their pulses are steady, but…I have no idea what was in the tranquilizers. There's not much to do except wait."

Jean came to a standstill behind one of the two armchairs that stood side by side facing the fireplace. His tiredness was making him feel cold, to the point that he could feel the warmth of even the small flame of the oil lamp on the table between the chairs. He laid a hand on the chair back and instantly wanted to drape himself over it. He blinked rapidly a couple of times.

"You haven't slept since you got here," Mercedes said. "Neither of you," she cast her voice to Baena too.

"You know me, stamina for days," Baena smiled and leaned over to stoke the fire.

"I know," Mercedes smiled back.

"You're the one who should be sleeping," Jean replied.

"I'm sure you know I can't right now."

Jean supposed she was right. Her father, a man she hadn't seen in sixteen years, had not only returned from being presumed dead but had also turned out to be the cause of so much suffering – and until either he or Marco woke up, they still had no answers as to motive. He was also fairly sure – but was afraid to voice – that Mercedes was also wondering about her mother as a result. His gaze alighted on Marco and the others, lined up like corpses ready to be loaded into the wagons to take back to their families; he struggled to make sense of it all.

"Jean."

How could she still do that? All she had to do was say his name and he felt his blood shift in his veins, like he was iron and she, a lodestone.

"Sleep. Please," Mercedes said.

Yet even in the haze of his exhaustion he caught on to her other intent, as he was learning to do. She needed privacy. Since she couldn't very well just step outside, having everyone go to sleep was the best she could hope for. He understood that too well, having been in similar scenarios while out on expedition. And he couldn't deny that he hadn't slept in probably two days.

"Only for a little while," he finally conceded.

He wandered over to her, looking at the lovely ways the firelight stroked her face; he caught himself wondering if this was what their future would be like. Conscious of Baena and Julia still present, he restrained himself and merely kissed her crown before moving away. As he passed back by her, he was surprised by Julia reaching out and grabbing his hand, squeezing it hard.

She looked up at him. "Thank you," she whispered.

Though it felt somewhat foreign to him, Jean squeezed her hand back somewhat before releasing it. "No need to thank me."

Jean made his way down the line of feet to the vacant settee and made himself as comfortable as he could, turning his back to them. It was a little cramped, but he certainly wasn't going to leave the room and at least it was an upholstered object rather than the cold hard ground. The warmth from the fire draped over his back like a blanket and soon, the faint designs in the navy blue upholstery inches in front of his face grew even fainter, and his blinks lengthened until his eyes closed completely and he fell asleep. 

* * *

After a few more minutes of silence, Baena said, "I suppose I should try to get some sleep too, while I can, huh?" She put down the fire-poker with a small clank on the hearthstones. "Do either of you need anything?"

Mercedes looked at her friend, still exuding warmth and kindness despite everything. "I think we're fine for now, but thank you."

Baena examined her mock-critically, "Hmm, well, okay, but I'm going to be right here, so…" she shuffled down into the space between Fhalz and the settee, "just kick me or drop something on me if you need anything, all right?"

Mercedes waited until Baena settled down on her side facing away from them, watching with a smile as her hand crept up to hold onto Fhalz's arm. After another minute or two she started to snore lightly. Then, the distant endearment was gone – Mercedes' eyes drifted over her comrades, pausing at Marco at the far end, alighting on Jean next, lingering on her father. She felt the same anger she'd felt before swell in her stomach, and had to look away.

"I never thought we'd come back here," Julia whispered.

Mercedes turned her head to face her grandmother, but did not look at her. She didn't know what to respond with – she was feeling too many things and none of the words her mind grabbed seemed right.

"You asked me several times over the first couple of years if we would," Julia continued, "and then you stopped asking altogether. You were always too smart for your own good. I think I know, now, why you never asked for the door to the room I'd made for your parents to be unlocked."

Mercedes hadn't thought of the bedroom in some time, if she was honest. It hadn't felt important – her parents hadn't felt important. And now it was like a slap in the face to find out that at least one of them had been behind everything after all.

"You didn't want to open that box of awful truths – opening that door would mean asking questions about what truly happened to your parents, your uncles, your grandfather – I think you sensed that I didn't want it to be opened either and you were right. For that, I failed you," Julia said. "I gave you everything I could, armed you with whatever I had, but the truth."

She took a moment to absorb her words, looked at her out of the corner of her eye, and then said carefully, "You couldn't have known that he was alive, or that he'd side with the enemy."

There was a long pause. "No, I suppose not." Julia continued to stare at her son, all the way across the room in the shadows surrounding the dining table, the morning light bleeding into the windows behind them but still unable to reach him. "Your father was my favorite; I thought…if I were to ever see him again…I would be so happy. But now…it's as though he really is dead to me. I thought I'd finally be given a drink of water after wandering so long in the desert, but instead, I was given a mouthful of ash. That man over there…is only an echo of Léon."

Mercedes recalled the vindictiveness with which she'd struck her father down; how it'd taken so much strength, and ripped open a wound so old she never knew she had it. She felt it as clearly as she felt her physical wounds now.

As if reading her mind, Julia said, "Upstairs, you made a hard choice. Odd as it may sound, I'm proud of you." She sighed deeply and laid her hand on Mercedes' leg. "At least I still have you – I think I can bear even this, because I still have you. Up there, when I first found you, I thought I was going to lose you. I thought of your mother."

Mercedes' brow furrowed but she kept silent.

Julia's face took on a sad smile. "Your mother was like a blood-daughter to me – sure, two of your uncles married but I was never as close to their wives as I was to your mother – and she came into our lives not long after I lost my own baby girl. So, she became my daughter. Amaranta – 'Mara – nearly died having you, and then she disappeared along with your father. I lost two daughters. And then…the thought of losing the _grand_daughter I raised…"

"Granna…" Mercedes whispered, the tears in her grandmother's voice breaking her heart.

Julia helplessly looked over the young, sleeping soldiers spread at her feet. She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as she said, "When will I stop losing children?"

Though it was a struggle to even consider it, Mercedes forced herself to say, "We don't know for certain that…Léon is completely lost to us."

Julia finally, slowly, turned her head to look at Mercedes. Her face was forlorn. She tipped her head ever so slightly to one side and the forlornness turned into pity, confusing Mercedes. "My darling, you do not know him like I do."

Mercedes' own head lowered and she looked out at Julia from under a heavy, concerned brow. "What do you mean?"

Julia hesitated, and then said reluctantly, "Your father loved your mother more than anything in the world. Even if the sun went dark, that was never going to change. So where is she?"

Mercedes felt a chill run up her spine. She swallowed and looked at her father, his head still bowed to his chest to form a crumpled silhouette in profile against the dim window. In light of her grandmother's words, it no longer seemed to be a pose of defeat – instead, of something much darker simply waiting to unfurl.

After all he'd done…could there still be more he was capable of? She wondered if she should have killed him upstairs, had all this be over in the time it took her to pull a trigger. Yet – as much as she cursed herself and the memory – she also recalled the gentle, genuine way he'd looked at her, held his arms open to her. As hard as she'd struck him, as angry as she'd been, that had still stayed her hand.

"He's still my father – he's still your son," Mercedes said slowly, hoping that as she spoke them her heart would believe the words her body seemed to. She resettled to try to take pressure off the rib that had begun to ache. A glance at her grandmother caught her sour expression, so she added, "Up there, your hand was stayed, too."

Julia didn't reply, only breathed deeply in and out as though calming herself. She kept staring at Léon.

"We'll have to figure out what to do with him," Mercedes continued resignedly. Her words fell into the silent room and lay among the shadows on the floor, without the power to continue into any solid idea – leaves hoping to build an entire tree.

The two of them sat in silence for what felt like an age. Mercedes allowed herself to stop thinking for a while. She felt the morning sun, stained pink and gold, stream through the two windows to her right and gradually creep up one side of her neck and face like a rising tide of fire. She also allowed herself to re-attune herself to her body, reattaching every muscle and tendon and restringing every vein that her father's appearance had cut free, until she was conscious of each of them again. After all – her unfocused gaze returned to Jean, the firelight stroking his back – he needed her.

"Erwin sent them to get you back," Julia said.

Mercedes was drawn back into reality by her words. She hadn't thought of Erwin – or any of the others – in some time. There was a flash of the horror of her guilt-riddled nightmares before she slammed the door shut, but the rapid patter of her pulse and the renewed ache of her wounds remained, like light beneath that door.

"But also to try to convince the Burning Titan to come back too, and help."

Mercedes looked at Marco on his back on the floor. She had scraps of memory of everything he'd done for her since they'd got here, though much of it was obscured by the psychotic breaks and blackouts she'd experienced. The last thing she could remember for definite was hearing him and Two Swords talking through the door the night she'd tried to get to the oil burner. Yet there was also this other, fainter sensation of feeling his hands holding her face, seeing a plea in his eyes, hearing his fractured, loving voice – the word 'dearest', his trembling lips pressed to hers. But it was so faint, so indistinct, that it didn't seem real.

_No,_ she thought, looking at his pale, gentle face. _It must be just an echo._


	14. Chapter 14: Daughter of War & Absence, I

**Chapter 14: Daughter of War &amp; Absence, Part I**

Soon, Julia too had fallen asleep by resting her head against the back of the settee, baring her throat while the mid-morning sun laid its warm hand on her forehead, standing behind her. Mercedes felt incapable of sleeping – even if she didn't feel the pressing need to keep a watch of sorts, every part of her felt so alive, so present. Everything was sharp and in focus, too close; thoughts and memories and predictions and physical sensations crowded one another until the air she was breathing seemed to be water.

_We're all the way out here…the Walls are broken, and it's because of him, _she thought as she stared at her father. _And they want us – want me – to come back, after what they did to me…_ Her fingers testily trailed over the tan fabric of her skirt, feeling the tender ridges and troughs of the burns and harpoon entry-point through the thin fabric. She pulled her mouth to one side ever so slightly and felt the tug on the scrape across her right cheek. _Even if I wanted to go back, what's left for me out here? We can't go back without doing something about him._

Mercedes carefully leaned over, still feeling the soreness in her left side and shoulder, and carefully maneuvered Julia's rifle across her. Using it as a crutch in much the same was as Julia did, she pushed herself to her feet and equally carefully maneuvered her way out from between the sleeping bodies. She took slow, quiet steps toward the dining area, the butt of the rifle a muted third footfall. The two of them came to stand in front of her father.

_No, I cannot consider him my father,_ she thought. She had struggled to identify him as such when she'd first laid eyes on him, and then struggled to overcome that bitterness, and now she was back at square one – struggling to see him as _anything but_ a collaborator.

Less than a foot away, Mercedes could smell his travels on him and as she picked out each individual scent, she couldn't help but think of them as talismans of betrayal: the sweat was the leagues he'd ridden away from her and Julia; the scent of pine the number of shadows he'd plotted inside; the peppery gunpowder his words and the lies they'd spun; the singed leather may as well have been her memories of them together burning at the edges. And mixed in with them all, the bitter stench of soured vegetation, weaving its way through everything – it was the valerian, and so many other leaves and roots boiled into poisons – as it had taken hold of her system and she'd been purged from it, had it also taken hold of him? Could he, too, be purged?

Mercedes' eyes stung but they were too dry now to cry. She pulled her lips inside her mouth and reached out a shaking hand as if to brush his hair back. But as much as she wanted to touch him, even receive a loving caress in return – something to show this had all been a bad dream – she couldn't.

Her hand dropped to her side; she looked away. Her gaze traveled over the sleeping soldiers and her grandmother like they were a map. They needed answers, and her – no, Léon – had them. She wasn't naïve enough to think he would simply tell them everything.

One more memory came to her – not her earliest, but close enough, in fact – was the day he'd found her with the sick foal, and she'd asked him about death because she wasn't satisfied with her grandfather's answer. She'd explained this, and he said he'd never lie to her. Not only did he explain why everyone sometimes lied, including grown-ups to their children, but he'd told her about death and how no one really knew what happened afterward. And it was true – he'd never lied to her.

Mercedes swallowed, pressing her eyes shut. After a moment she remembered to breathe, and moved toward the kitchen.

_It has to be me,_ she realized.

A strange sort of stillness came over her with this knowledge; she was uncomfortable with how easily her eyes roved over the kitchen seeking out what she might need. Each object, and each of its shadows and colors and edges, however innocent, prompted words in her brain. Like they were beads scattered on the floor from a broken necklace, she began to string them together, preparing what she would say, what she would demand, how she would strike.

His swords were in their scabbards on the counter, along with his rifle. It matched her grandmother's in her hand. They'd also relieved him of his belt, since it had three suspicious-looking pouches that might contain other tools or weapons. Two of them were hard-cased, oddly enough. She reached for one, its toggle made of an animal tooth.

"You shouldn't be up," Jean said, startling her despite his low voice.

She carefully turned to face him. "And you should've taken the opportunity to sleep a little more," she said.

He came to a stop in front of her, his hand running down her good arm. "Time's not on our side, and we –"

"– need answers," she finished for him with a nod. "Yes. That's why I can't be idle either," she pointed out.

"But you don't have to take the reins on this, 'Cee," Jean said. His amber eyes – the color of wheat today, she noticed – searched her own. He seemed to detect what she was thinking. "It's your dad," he whispered. "And you've already been through so much – being asked to shoot the King, and then being…hung at the gate," he licked his lips and looked away, "if I can spare you from any more pain –"

Mercedes reached up and placed two fingers on his warm mouth, silencing him. "Those people behind the broken Walls weren't spared. Julia, Marco, Eve, my Squad, you – you weren't spared. Why should I be?" She paused, and moved her hand to hold his face, tugging gently so he would look back at her. The stillness she was experiencing – the horrible stillness – was becoming an equally terrible yet useful clarity. "These are the kinds of things that will make or break a person, and I would rather be made than broken. I won't run from it any more – I refuse to look away. Please don't ask me to."

Jean exhaled slowly, deliberately. A year ago, she knew he would have screamed at her, argued with her. But now, he merely stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her, holding the back of her head with his hand and resting his chin on her crown. She knew that had been difficult for him. She breathed with him gratefully for at least a minute.

"Thank you," she murmured into his chest, as though speaking to his heart directly. Then she lifted her head, speaking again to his mind, "You risked so much to come here, and I know you'll be risking a lot to follow Erwin's orders to bring us back. The least I can do is support your efforts." She rested her cheek on his collarbone, her gaze returning to the bowed head of Léon. "No matter what it takes."

* * *

Luckily, Oliver had been one of the first ones to wake from the tranquilizer-induced sleep. Once Mercedes had shown them where, he and Jean had picked Léon up, still tied to the chair, and moved him down into the small basement beneath the pantry. Léon had, of course, woken up as they carted him down the stairs, groaned a little, and then laughed.

Mercedes, contrastingly, had been silent. As Oliver reluctantly left them, Jean turned to where she stood leaning against a set of shelves, just inside the radius of the light from the oil lamp. She wasn't looking at her father yet – rather, at the items she'd lined up on a breakfast tray that now sat precariously on a stool nearby. Léon was eyeing them too, but the smirk on his face – Mercedes' smirk – wasn't faltering.

Frowning, still wrestling with his conscience, Jean stepped up beside her with his back to Léon. "Are you sure about this? Are you sure you have to be the one to…" he trailed off.

"Yes. I'm the only one he can see clearly," Mercedes said. She must have caught him glancing again at the tray, because she added, "Just promise me one thing?"

"Anything."

"Remember that this doesn't change who I am."

Jean considered her words a moment, trying to find the best response. But he caught her eye, and that was just about enough. He wanted to kiss her, hold her, touch her, but traitor and potential psycho or not, her father was in the room. Instead, he said, "I'll be right outside the door."

* * *

Mercedes heard Jean pull the door to, but not close it. She wanted to reach out and close it, put up some barrier to contain what she was about to do, but knew it'd do more harm in the long run. She'd heard Oliver close the door behind him at the top of the staircase, and that would have to be enough.

"It's good to see you," said Léon.

The awful, still clarity came back with a vengeance, sharp as his eyes that hers now rose to meet. "Is it?"

"When you have children of your own one day, you'll understand. Speaking of, is that my future son-in-law outside, or is it the dark-haired, freckled one?"

She let fall a pause, not dignifying his question with a response. Her leg was already starting to hurt her again but she didn't want to show weakness; she kept talking as if it was the only way she could hold herself upright without a crutch, "I have questions."

"Judging by your tray of delights, you don't expect me to give answers."

"Maybe not. But that's up to you, isn't it?"

"I wish we didn't have to speak in this way. I'm your father, after all."

"I thought my father had more mettle than to be afraid of a nutcracker."

"It is because I am your father – and the son of the woman who raised you – that I am aware of what you could do with that nutcracker. But, I don't think it'll come to any of that."

"No?"

"No, and you don't think so either."

It was easy to see how others could be hypnotized by his words and manner of speaking; Mercedes had to keep herself on track. "That's not what we're here to discuss."

Léon smiled at her, tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes as he slowly leant back in the chair. The light from the oil lamp made his sweaty skin shimmer. He waited, letting her look over him without comment. It was a struggle to find anything that reached back and mirrored what she remembered of him.

She had to test her theory first. She still seemed to be regarded as his daughter; would he still refuse to lie to her?

"Did you think of us at all, over the years? Even once?" she whispered.

Surprisingly, his smile decayed. He frowned at her, and as though seeing her for the first time, his eyes grew wide and hurt emerged in his features. He tried to stand and jerked to a frustrated halt when he realized he was still tied. He looked rapidly away from her at the floor as if in shame, his mouth opening once, twice, but remaining soundless.

"Did you?" she grated out.

He closed his eyes defeatedly. She wondered if it was an act. But then, with a single word that both broke her and dismissed all doubt, he said, "No."

Mercedes, too, opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Hurt bubbled within her despite herself. After a moment she said, "You're lying," despite herself.

"I promised you I'd never lie to you."

Mercedes shook her head. Her voice was choked as she insisted, "You're not looking at me. Look at me and tell me you didn't wonder about us."

He looked at her dead in the eye. "No."

"That you didn't want to find us," she said, the tears that brewed in her throat climbing into her eyes. They didn't break eye contact.

"No."

"That you didn't dream of us at night –"

"No."

"– or even wonder whether we were dead or alive…" her tears spilt at the loudness of his pause, his bereft expression.

"No," Léon breathed.

Mercedes felt like a derailed cannon, plummeting from the top of the Walls themselves, her heart a leaden ball tumbling out of her body to race her to the ground. Again, she shook her head. She knocked the rifle a little ways away from her to better prop herself up as the strength threatened to leave her legs. Léon noticed, but said nothing.

"Why?" she grated out.

Léon moistened his chapped lips, furrowed his brow. He blinked lazily. "When your future seems so uncertain, so volatile, so fragile…it's easier to look into the past. Often, it can seem even more real than the present. I would rather have my memories that I know occurred – would rather have that past I know I had with our family – than shreds of shadows of what I didn't know. The thought of not seeing you again…that I'd never see you again… At least I had you in my memories. You and your mother."

"You're a coward!" Mercedes burst, satisfied with how he flinched. The masochistic need to press onward was seething inside her, articulating her tongue, "Where is my mother?"

"Dead," Léon's voice was hollow but his body seemed to stir, like a draught in an empty room.

"Did you kill her?"

"No."

"Why are you collaborating with the enemy? Who are they? What do they want?" Mercedes continued to demand.

Léon's face hardened again as if he'd come back to reality. He examined her critically. "Are you going to kill me?"

"We'll see," Mercedes tipped her head. Anger was taking over and she couldn't stop it. "Answer me! Why are you here?"

"To gather more soldiers," he said, staring directly at her.

Her skin crawled and her face contorted into a sneer. She remembered that night she'd been dragged off the street into the basement, tortured, molested, interrogated about Titan-shifters back before she knew such things existed. Here she was doing the same thing, essentially, and yet the opposite. "Make us into Titan-shifters," she spat. "Did you think you could just round us all up, bring us back to base, that we'd betray humanity so happily?"

The flame of the oil lamp behind her danced in his eyes. "No one said anything about 'happily', but…even good, pure people like that boy that's smitten with you – Marco – anyone can be bought. One must only know the price."

Mercedes' sneer settled into a scowl. She propped the rifle against the shelves despite her pain, snared a paring knife off the breakfast try and languidly wandered over to him. One hand gripped his hair and jerked his head back – he didn't resist. With her other hand, she held the knife above one infuriatingly dry tear duct while her own continued to water.

"And what was your price?" she growled.

Léon hesitated, the myriad of blues in his unblinking eyes mottling and shifting like a turning tide. His warm breath patted her throat. "Mine, your mother, was taken from me. What would be yours?" he whispered back, at length.

Mercedes tried not to let the question in, but it was like water and her mind was a cracked vessel. She tried not to consider it, but images flooded in – Jean, her grandmother – and she knew that she had more in common with this man than she wanted to admit. Her price…her price had kept her alive. And were it to be taken away, would she not care anymore if the world burned? Another tear fell from her eye and landed on his cheek.

"Careful, now," he said gently, resignedly, "don't cloud your vision with tears. You might miss your mark." He finally blinked and his eyelashes brushed the blade.

The anger was subsiding. The incredulity and hurt was subsiding. But it was the eye of a storm. Mercedes released her grip and took just one step back, still holding the paring knife.

"We're not alike," she answered herself. "I wouldn't have left my child."

Léon tilted his head back upright, for the first time displaying a small amount of curiosity.

Mercedes felt the tears begin to dry on her cheeks, like so many times she'd felt Titan blood evaporate from her skin. Weakness seemed to go with it and though she knew this should worry her – how good the knife felt in her hand – she couldn't help but feel some assurance in it.

"You said you didn't think of us," she repeated, taking the few steps toward the door.

"No."

Mercedes frowned. "Yet you said you wanted to see your daughter."

Léon said nothing.

With one hand she closed the door to the basement. The other regripped the knife. "She doesn't exist anymore. No, you will see the daughter of war and absence."

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Sorry for the delayed update, everyone! Work's been hectic and this wasn't exactly a breeze to write. However, thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read and review!


	15. Chapter 15: Daughter of War & Absence II

**Chapter 15: Daughter of War &amp; Absence, Part II**

Jean had learned something very important and unexpected about his relationship with Mercedes, young as it was – he did not like her closing the door on him. And yet…and yet he tried to let it go, to be patient. He remembered everything she'd told him, about not asking her to turn away from the horrible task ahead of her, about not letting it change his view of her.

He sat on the stairs and clutched his hands together, eyeing the door. He'd heard the vast majority of the conversation between father and daughter and it'd made him sick for several reasons. Of course the first had been this notion that a father wouldn't think of his family in twelve years – or at least claim not to; Jean wasn't entirely convinced that Mercedes was right when she said Léon couldn't lie to her. But then, if Léon was going to lie, surely that would have been the best point to do so? Not to mention, why admit he was here to 'gather more soldiers'?

They'd stopped talking now. Judging by Mercedes' words and what she was no doubt feeling, things were about to get ugly. He held his breath, looking at the cracks around the door, expecting to hear growls or shouts or screams, but instead…instead it was eerily quiet, and what few sounds traveled to him over the next few minutes were delicate: the _clink_ of metal on wood, the precise tearing of cloth, kitchen shears closing around something soft and thick, rope tightening, the slow patter of dripping.

Jean didn't want to believe Mercedes was capable of torturing her own father, no matter what he'd done. It was hard to readjust to the idea that loving her didn't turn her into some kind of saint; that however far she'd come from that terrible place he'd helped drag her out of, she was still capable of going back into it. But who was she doing it for, or why? Revenge? To get more information?

The jingle of slightly loose metal, followed by a spine-chilling, muted _cruck_. Léon stifled a cry. Jean bit his lip.

What would happen to her after this? Was this yet another form of spending her venom, like he'd witnessed before? Or was it starting her down a darker road? After she was done with Léon, would she be capable of other atrocities? Would she turn into the kind of person – like Erwin, Pixis, or Levi – who could put aside her humanity in the interests of the bigger picture?

The _cruck_ sound came again, with another stifled cry. No words were exchanged. Jean brought one hand to his chin, pressing a knuckle against his lips so hard it hurt.

A father had not only neglected to seek out his child and mother, but had openly admitted to not caring; a father had collaborated with the enemy so his child's world would burn. That child was retaliating on behalf of herself, her grandmother, humanity. He tried to understand. He tried to sympathize. He tried to justify her actions as if…as if…

_As if our children asked me why their mother did what she did,_ he thought, with a sudden, surprising pain in his heart. He could feel their eyes on his back as if they stood at the top of the stairs, listening to yet another one of their grandfather's bones be broken.

He was standing. He was opening the door, stepping inside the hot, cramped room.

Mercedes was poised with the nutcracker vising the middle knuckle of Léon's right middle finger, preparing to squeeze, while his hand lay limply on the arm of the chair – it dripped blood from the several cuts that formed a bracelet around his wrist – he figured she must have severed the tendons to his fingers with the red-tipped shears that lay on the floor. Father and daughter looked up at Jean's entry, their expressions unnervingly similar.

"'Cee, stop. This isn't right," Jean said.

The hand he held up in a placatory gesture reached out for her, but she batted it away, her face not losing its sneer. He barely recognized her. "This is Carello business," she spat. "Leave."

Jean felt his temper rally to his side in a way he'd not felt around her in over a year. "No, and don't you ever shut the door on me again," he said. "I can't let you do this."

He saw her own temper – the one he hadn't seen on _her_ in over a year – mimic his. Her eyes became fierce. "Who said you have a choice?"

As if to spite him, she clenched the handles of the little engraved nutcracker and broke yet another of Léon's knuckles. Léon hissed and jerked his head back, shutting his eyes. On his exhale he groaned. But then his eyes were open, and he was looking between his daughter and Jean and the trembling attempt at a smirk was showing on his face.

"Ah, it must be this one," Léon rasped. "Good."

Jean didn't have time to wonder what Léon meant; he refocused on Mercedes. He jerked her arm – the one that held that nutcracker she was repositioning on the next knuckle – away and insodoing turned her to face him. She stumbled a little due to her bad leg and he resisted the urge to steady her; as if retaliating equally, she struck out at him with her free, bloodied hand. Jean caught it and pushed his face close to hers, trying to peer through the haze of pent-up aggression and frustration that clouded their vision. He could feel her pounding pulse in her wrist. He was so close that even in the dim light he could see the striations in her irises and the faintest, tiniest indent of a birthmark just below her left eyebrow; he was so close he could kiss her, and felt the breath escape from her parted mouth into his own.

He whispered his words into her mouth, hoping in that way they might become her own and all of this would stop. "Please. Years from now, if we're both still alive, I don't want to lie to what children we may have about what happened here."

Jean saw the shocked clarity in her eyes as her pupils dilated, the slightest movement of her eyebrows and cheeks as she processed his words. For the briefest of moments, her face seemed to relax. Then, she winked at him. He frowned.

Before he could question her Mercedes was ripping herself away from his grasp, in the time it took to turn back around her face contorting horribly into anguish. She dropped the nutcracker and in its place, seized a larger kitchen knife from the breakfast tray. To his further shock, she held it up to her throat. Her teeth were clenched like the grimace of a wild, cornered animal.

"'Cee?" he stuttered in disbelief. He felt frozen to the spot.

"What are you doing?" Léon asked. A glance in his direction showed Jean how his hitherto self-assured, almost bemused expression had suddenly sharpened into worry.

"I'll make this easy," she said to Léon; her voice had an oddly gravelly lilt to it that made it sound like his. "I'll even ask the same questions. This time, you're going to tell me the truth. If you don't, I'll slit my throat." She rocked from foot to foot, and it made the hem of her skirt brush her knees.

Panic seized Jean. This didn't make any sense. He even looked at Léon for some kind of clue, some kind of assurance, but the older man seemed just as panicked.

"Where is my mother?" she began lowly.

Léon managed to shrug helplessly. "Dead," he repeated.

"Mercedes," Jean tried again and stepped forward.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and pressed the knife deeper into her skin. "Stay back, Jean." She looked back at Léon, "What do you mean, 'dead'?"

His voice was hurried, irritable, "They said if we helped them, we could save you. 'Mara didn't believe them – she wanted to go home to you. It was the fourth night we were away from home – we still could have made it back in time before my mother moved you both to Klorva, before the fifth day. Your mother and I tried to escape, but they caught us, and gave us the same deal. She refused, and they killed her."

"Who are 'they'?" Mercedes demanded next.

Though Léon never removed his eyes from the knife, his gaze grew unfocused. "All of us used codenames. I only had contact with two of them – Stone Eyes and Cricket – and I've never been to their homeland, but I know of it as the Delta Village. This is the homeland of those you know as the Colossal and Armored Titans. That's all I know."

Mercedes frowned, her eyes narrowing, and pressed the knife deeper. A split bud of blood swelled where knife edge met skin.

"That's all I know about them!" Léon desperately insisted. Jean could see his left hand – the one he could still use – strain and stretch his fingers toward his daughter.

"And they sent you for more soldiers," she said, "since you had so successfully recruited Marco. So you thought you'd get me next? And then when the others came here, you thought you'd see if they were suitable, too? Let me guess – a serum?"

Jean frowned even more deeply. Their hypothesis that Grisha Yaeger had given Eren a serum of some kind hadn't been confirmed, and they had no idea how Reiner, Annie and Bertholt had gained their shifting ability. How would Mercedes have known? She'd had no contact with Eren in months.

"In my belt," Léon admitted quietly. He was staring at Mercedes perplexedly, as if he couldn't help the words coming out of his mouth. Jean had expected more resistance but then, he supposed, if he were in his place, what wouldn't he confess to keep his child from harm?

Mercedes paused, and moistened her lips. Again she adjusted her footing, flexed her fingers on the knife handle. "You lost my mother, and you agreed to help them so that you stood a chance of seeing me again, even if it meant you turned me into a monster," she surmised. Her voice dropped to a whisper as taut and sharp as the steel of a maneuvering gear line, "Didn't it occur to you that in your absence, in the war you helped perpetuate, I'd already become one?"

Jean watched Léon's frown deepen, too. His brow rose and creased in a sadness he hadn't seen before. The haughtiness was gone, replaced by heartbreak that made his previously animated face as barren as a field; it was into this field that Mercedes sowed her final question:

"Did you think of us?" Her slow, deliberate, simple syllables hung in the humid air like light.

Léon didn't answer; he looked down into the middle distance between the three of them. Jean wondered why he'd be more reluctant to answer this question than the others: he watched his eyes water and his face move through defensiveness, then defeat, resignation, and pain into something stranger and quite the opposite – like he'd figured something out – pride, perhaps, that made his face seem warm and, for a change, fatherly. But still he didn't look up. Another drop of blood from his hand fell to the small puddle of it on the floor.

"Answer me," Mercedes said. "Don't think I won't do it," she added as she bared her throat a little more.

Jean instinctively twitched toward her in response, not sure if he himself believed she would or not but not wanting to take the chance. When he glanced back at Léon, he was shocked to find the other man staring back at him with a knowing smile on his face. Before Jean could decipher it, Léon was turning his head to Mercedes.

"Yes," Léon whispered. His cracked voice still managed to have a musical quality, "Every day, I thought of you. How could I not – you've always been the song of my heart. Now put the knife down."

"Why did you lie before? How do I know this isn't another lie?" she asked. The knife remained at her throat but it didn't press as deep.

Léon didn't hesitate. "What would have been easier to say: that I didn't find my way to you because I didn't care, or that I didn't even though I never stopped? What would have been easier to hear?" He paused, and a tear slipped from his eye. "Believe me, the latter is far worse, and the things I've done and endured a fitting punishment for it. You were right when you called me a coward."

Jean uneasily watched Mercedes process her father's words, waiting for another outburst, but none came. Her chest rose and fell with her intense breathing, every muscle taut.

"If you're going to kill someone, finish what began twelve years ago and kill me," Léon said. "After all, you managed to trick me, and Jean too – meaning you really are my daughter. So I did get my last wish after all."

If Jean had been unsettled by the entire scenario thus far, he was completely floored now. Tricked? She had tricked them? Had that been what the wink was about? He looked at Mercedes for an explanation, unable to form a question or decide how he felt about that prospect.

After a moment, the hand that held the knife dropped to Mercedes' side and her posture relaxed. She stared at Léon for a moment, and then her face took on the same smile Jean had seen on her father a few minutes ago – he realized it hadn't been pride, not exactly, but a sort of bitter recognition. She was admitting Léon was right. Now Léon was mimicking her, and in that brief window before the moment was gone, Jean felt like he was the outsider – that this was indeed Carello business, and he would never be a part of that.

Then Mercedes replaced the knife on the bloody breakfast tray, the smile disappearing. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she suggested. "For it all to end here." Without another glance at him she moved past Jean, grabbed Julia's rifle and left the room. He heard her carefully begin her ascent of the stairs.

Jean turned to follow her, but paused. Reluctantly, he looked over his shoulder at Léon. He felt he should say something, but couldn't articulate anything.

Léon had a look of grim satisfaction on his face. "Don't take it personally," he said. "She did what she had to do."

Jean didn't reply. He left the basement, closing the door behind him, and hurried to catch up with Mercedes, who by now had reached the top of the stairs. He stopped a couple of steps below her. Before she could turn the door handle he placed his hand on the crook of her elbow, stopping her gently but insistently.

Seeming to detect what he was going to say, she reminded him, "I told you to remember that this doesn't change who I am."

He seemed to understand, now, the multiple meanings to her statement. Radical as it all had been, the ability to perform it had been inside her all along and by default he had loved it just as he loved the nobler things about her, just as he loved her still in the wake of the uglier things.

"And you yourself admitted you would be just outside the door – even when you were in the room with us," she said. "You knew."

He did, Jean realized. He'd known all along, somewhere, and been okay with that.

"You knew I'd come in," he finally said.

After a pause she reached behind her in the dark and found his hand with her own. "I was hoping."

He squeezed her hand, sticky with her father's blood, and rested his head against her warm back. Her breathing was strangely even and it helped to calm him. "You had me worried for a minute, there."

"I'd only ever kill myself if it was to stop something else from doing it for me." She paused, then added more seriously, "I'm sorry. I figured…if I was all he had left, and I put that in danger, I could use it as a bargaining chip to get as much information as possible before he figured me out."

Jean remembered Léon's shifting face, the smile of pride and bitter recognition. "But even after he worked out what you were doing, he still answered you truthfully. Why?"

Mercedes hesitated, and then he felt her shrug. "Who knows."

He suspected she had another answer, but didn't press.

She opened the door and they squinted at the comparatively bright light as they emerged into the pantry.

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Regarding Leon's answer about who he's been working with - obviously, at this point we essentially don't know anything about the 'homeland' Reiner and Bertholt refer to, so I've given it the name 'the Delta Village' for creative flow purposes, and likewise his contacts are non-canon fictitious. If anything ever becomes clear, canonically, in that regard, I'll come back and edit.


	16. Chapter 16: Corruption

**Chapter 16: Corruption**

Jean kept a couple of fingers on Mercedes' elbow as they made their way back into the dining area, where the others were gathered in various states of restlessness around the now-cleared table and drinking glasses of what looked like pond water at Julia's insistence. His hand dropped. Six pairs of eyes drew to them – expectant, wary, sharp. At first he wondered if they'd managed to hear anything that went on downstairs, but then he realized that they were simply waiting for the two of them to speak – they were waiting for direction.

Mercedes, however, moved to the sink in the kitchen nearby to wash her hands and even in that small distance, before Jean clamped down on it he felt bereft, unbalanced. It didn't escape his notice, either, that Marco's eyes had followed her – but that was a conversation for another time.

"Time isn't on our side," he began, leaning on the back of a chair. "I'd suggest that we rest today, eat a good meal if we can, and leave tomorrow at dawn. Who knows what we'll be returning to, but we _do_ know it's getting worse by the minute." The gentle running of the water in the sink behind him was making him tired again. "Though with any luck, Commander Erwin has formulated a plan and is keeping the Titans at bay, and Eren and Historia have been rescued." He sighed. "If Eren can't reseal the breaches in the Walls, I don't know if Historia will have anything left to rule – the coup will have been for nothing – so anything we can do to help him..."

"Coup?" Marco was looking at him confusedly. The others turned to him, also confused.

Jean locked eyes with him. Of course he hadn't known. When could he have learned about it?

"Y'know, the part where we depose the fake, corrupt monarchy and replace it with the real one?" Fhalz said.

Marco's eyes hadn't left Jean, even though he'd been spoken to. The creeping devastation in them made Jean's heart sink farther than he'd thought it could go. Suddenly he remembered how much Marco had wanted to enter the Military Police, and how rare his noble reasons were for doing so: he'd genuinely wanted to serve, to protect the establishment he thought so upright. No doubt he must have suffered to have had that chance taken away but now, to hear that it had never been worthy of him, had to be worse.

"Corrupt," he repeated dazedly. "It was corrupt?" He seemed to have difficulty processing the idea.

"I'm sorry," Jean said.

Jean stared at him for a few more moments, but the situation didn't improve. The silence following his words seemed to be clawing at his ankles, trying to pull him to the floor; his body slumped somewhat and his head slowly dropped. An irrational sense of guilt – perhaps the same creature as the silence – clawed at Jean, too.

He had to do something. He had to keep them all afloat. He had to get them all back in one piece – physically, mentally, and emotionally. And if Marco wasn't strong enough, there wasn't any point to any of this.

"Hey, Marco," Jean said gently. "How about we get some air?"

Hesitantly, Marco followed him out the back door into the sunshine. As they fought their way through the overgrown garden to put some distance between them and the house, Jean wondered how to begin.

* * *

Mercedes turned off the faucet and dried her hands; she watched through the parted lace curtains as Jean led Marco farther away into the yard and her heart fluttered briefly with anxiety. She didn't want anyone here to be out of her sight, not really, but she had to try her best to trust Jean's judgment. She had to pretend that she could confine everything she'd heard downstairs. She had to try not to digest the things that'd crept through her ears and nose into her mouth, sneaking down her throat. There would be a time for it. And as long as they didn't ask her about it, it didn't have to be now.

Slowly, carefully, she turned to face the others. In dropping the towel on the counter, again she saw her father's belt, rifle, and swords. No doubt the serums were in the pouches attached to the belt.

"Is he in the basement?" Julia asked her, and Mercedes was surprised by her tone – one of displeasure.

Mercedes closed her eyes briefly. "Yes," she said.

"Did you take him down there to torture him? Why would you do that without consulting me first?"

Mercedes bristled. "I wasn't aware that I had to consult you."

She met her grandmother's hardened eyes. She hadn't been expecting this level of disapproval and her mind was too full of new information and tiredness to figure out what might be causing it.

Julia seemed to calm herself. "I should go see him, then." She took a couple of limping steps away from the table.

"No. I don't want you to go down there, Julia," said Mercedes sternly. She wanted to spare Julia from that man's lies, his corruption. Although her own were damaged beyond repair, she wanted Julia's memories of Léon to remain as intact as possible.

"Oh you don't, do you?" Julia rounded on her. "Why is that? Is there something down there I shouldn't see? Something you're ashamed of? That you regret?"

Baena stood from her spot at the table and took a step toward them. She wiggled the glass in her hand, "Hey 'Cee, you should probably have one of these, too. They –"

Mercedes ignored her. "No, there's nothing like that," she sniped back at Julia.

"Did you get the information you want? Hm?" Julia continued, her hands on her hips. "At what cost? Did you beat him? Mutilate your own father?"

"No, I –"

"Did you even think that there might be another way to get answers?"

"There was no other way and you know it!" Mercedes yelled. "And you wanted answers, right?"

Julia narrowed her eyes and lowered her head to stare at her granddaughter from under a heavy brow. She shook her head. "Not like this. I did not raise you like this."

"Stop getting upset about something that's not your obligation!"

Julia shook on the spot, jabbing a finger at the floor. "It is my obligation because I am his mother!"

"Well you're not mine – my mother is dead," Mercedes burst.

"'Cee," Fhalz reproached in the silence that followed.

The words were out of her mouth and she knew they were wrong, but even the briefest glance at Julia's stunned, distraught face was too much to bear for the sake of correcting them. Mercedes walked as fast as she could out of the room and headed for her old bedroom. Her face was hot and her eyes were beginning to tear up.

* * *

Marco and Jean stood in silence leaning against the fence – or at least, one of the slats miraculously still standing after all these years – looking out over the windswept, overgrown field. The hastily-drawn form of Sabine, Mercedes' mare, was grazing happily in the distance, presumably still proud of herself for being the one to escape the stables during Léon's attack and return to her old stomping grounds. The sun was warm on their backs and necks, and Marco wondered had the situation been different, would this have been how they'd spend their retirement. Maybe there was still a chance for that, but he doubted it. All those old dreams felt so distant.

It felt strange, peering into his life before he became a Titan-shifter. It was as though he was looking into a well and his reflection peering back at him was preventing him from seeing the actual water. To hear that the government he'd so wanted to protect back then as a trainee had been false, corrupt…it was difficult, but mostly because he felt it shouldn't be. He shouldn't be upset by the news. After all, he'd inadvertently served them in his new role, his new form, and that old life had long been lost – like a milktooth. Fragile, naïve, its purpose long since satisfied.

Besides, shouldn't he be proud of his friends for upholding what was truly good? He should be glad that evil was toppled and that it was being done so selflessly. He was, inside, and yet he felt he had no right to celebrate it, to be proud – because how could he still call them his friends after so long away from them, of working against them? And moreover, he had no part in their duty. He had not toppled it. He had not been selfless and it had ruined so much. He'd never imagined, growing up, that he'd do such things.

Marco glanced to his right at Jean. He was squinting into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. No doubt Jean hadn't imagined him capable of such things either – that they'd be standing here. Marco still felt the urge of the old mission though it was fading; he had Jean and Mercedes now – he had what he'd wanted to secure. But it was a hollow victory for so many reasons.

Crows called overhead, sailing for their roost in a dead, tall tree to the left of the cleared land.

_Mercedes…_ he thought. _She loves him._ He remembered kissing her on the floor of the bedroom, how simultaneously liberated and crippled he'd felt by it. He remembered the hastily-halted confrontation with Jean that loomed over them like a storm in the cloudless sky, rendered invisible by their avoidance of it.

He knew Jean wanted him to go back with them and help undo all the damage he'd caused. It almost felt like asking his blood to flow the opposite way, though he knew it shouldn't. Not only had he gone through all of that agony in order to rescue her, not only had her heart been beyond his reach already, but now they were asking him to pretend none of that mattered? To return? He felt as picked-clean as the tree the crows were roosting in.

Marco swallowed. He felt nervous; his own heart seemed to tremble in its cage. _But…Jean has been – is – brave. He's doing things he doesn't want to do because he knows they have to be done. And this has to be done – we have to talk about this. I have to be brave, too, like Oliver said. I owe Jean that much._

He remembered Jean's choked "How could you?", and it made the sting and ache of the blows he'd landed on him resurface before he shut it out of his mind.

"Jean," he began, turning to him. "About Mercedes. You…know, don't you?"

At her name, Jean seemed to come back to the present and shifted feet.

Marco moistened his lips and clarified, "You know that I still…care for her, and that it's going to take time to…not. As much as I respect you, I can't pretend that none of it mattered. That's like telling me that my reason for making it through the past two years isn't valid. And going back…" he looked away again at the skeletal tree, "going back is like telling me."

Jean didn't answer immediately. Marco watched him breathe deeply in and rub at the corner of one eye, but keep his gaze on the field. The wind ruffled his hair until it scratched at his drawn-down eyebrows. By the set of his mouth Marco wondered if he was going to receive a reprimand in reply.

Eventually, Jean said calmly, evenly, "I'm not asking you to not care about her, much less stop immediately. That'd be stupid of me to expect."

Marco instantly felt calmer.

"However," Jean continued. "You remember what Oliver said: this is all beyond personal vendettas. I know it's difficult for you – and it's difficult for me; I can only imagine what you've gone through – but I still need to ask you to come back with us." He finally turned to face him, too.

Marco rubbed the back of his neck. It was like listening to someone else rather than Jean, his tone was so different to how he remembered. Even his expression had calmed, matured – though expectant, it was decidedly neutral, and Marco had never seen Jean be neutral about anything. The pride he would have felt for his friend, however, had trouble buoying him up.

"We have to separate our private emotions from what we know is right," Jean added.

"I don't know if I can do that, Jean," Marco said helplessly. "I haven't been that good about it so far, as we've seen."

Jean's brow creased in sympathy. "Do you think you're the only one I'm suggesting that for? Mercedes and I have to abide by it, too."

Marco couldn't stop the words from falling out of his mouth, "Yeah, but she loves you back. You love each other. You don't have to rein in _your_ behavior."

Jean seemed to flinch at the word 'love', but didn't hesitate in answering, "Love doesn't excuse someone from being moral." His voice lowered, "Or at least it shouldn't."

It was Marco's turn to flinch. He folded his arms and leaned back on the fence. Memories of all that he'd done in Mercedes' name, in the name of his affection for her, came back.

"I'm sorry," Jean offered, seeming to realize what he'd said. "I've no right to take the moral high ground. After all…" he trailed off.

Marco looked at him, reluctantly finishing for him, "You wouldn't put her on trial for doing something wrong, because you're biased and you can't help it. I was biased – I still am. She's biased. We all are. What you mean to say is that we shouldn't let that bias rule every decision we make. That's how we ended up with a corrupt government."

Jean leaned on the fence again, too. After a moment's hesitation he said, "Yeah, I guess you're right." He ran a hand through his hair. "Anyway, I…I trust you. I trust you'll do the right thing."

There was a long silence. The wind seemed to grow stronger, heading northeast as though calling them home.

"I'll go with you," Marco said softly. "But…"

Jean glanced at him when he didn't continue. "But?"

Marco frowned to himself. "Never mind, it's nothing." He shifted under Jean's scrutiny.

"We should go back," Jean finally said.

Neither of them moved. Marco wondered if Jean wasn't moving for the same reason he wasn't – because the conversation would be closed, and would never be reopened – there wouldn't be another chance for forgiveness, allowance or explanation to do with their feelings for Mercedes ever again. Slowly, they both turned to face the house.

Marco sighed. _Forever hold your peace,_ he thought. He smiled a bittersweet smile at Jean, "I'll race you."

Jean seemed surprised by this, but after he processed it, he smirked. "All right. On three. One –"

Marco took off running, and heard Jean laugh and stumble to catch up with him. It helped him pretend.


	17. Chapter 17: Memory

**Chapter 17: Memory**

The brief feeling of glee that Jean had experienced came to a halt as abrupt as their stumble into the back door – his eyes were instantly on Julia, who was crying where she stood in the dining room. The tall, lithe figure of Baena was hunkered over the tinier woman, her arms around her in comfort. Fhalz and Oliver hovered around them, frowning.

"What happened?" Marco asked, his breathing still rushed from the run.

"Mercedes got all nasty with Julia," Eve said. Though she walked by with empty, dirty glasses clutched in her hands on her way to the sink, Jean noted the look of concern on her face.

Jean closed the door behind them and frowned, scanning the area. Mercedes was nowhere to be seen.

"We both got nasty with each other," Julia said gruffly, backing out of Baena's embrace and wiping her face and nose on the back of her hand.

"You sure you're all right, Ms Julia?" Oliver asked and held a hand out to steady her.

"Yes yes, fine, thank you," she said tersely, but her hands reached out and briefly passed over the three members of the Jaguar Squad, squeezing hands and arms reassuringly even if her face didn't yet ring true with her words. She cleared her throat. "No use standing around here sobbing." She looked around her urgently, presumably something to occupy herself with. "We'll need food," she said. Her bleary gaze alighted on Marco and examined him. "You seem to have become familiar with the dregs of our garden. Come on, let's see what we can dig up."

"Err, yes ma'am," Marco said as Julia took him by the arm and turned him around. They left through the back door, and it remained open.

Jean waited until they were a decent distance away, and then turned to the others, "What happened?"

"I don't know, you tell us," Fhalz folded his arms. "What happened downstairs? It had to have put her in a mess to make her snap at Ms Julia like she did. They bicker, yeah, but this was bad."

"She told Ms Julia 'You're not my mother'," Baena elaborated slowly.

Jean listened to the sound of Eve washing the glasses as he processed this.

"Is it true that her mother's dead?" Baena asked.

Jean leaned on the counter and nudged Léon's weapons as he did so. He winced as he folded his arms and the wound in his shoulder was tugged, but remembered what had gone on in the basement. "Yeah. Or, that's what her father said. She heard a lot of stuff. We both did. He…he was here to 'gather more soldiers'. He was going to try to turn us into Titan-shifters."

In the stunned quiet that followed, Jean reached behind him and dragged Léon's belt off the counter. The buckle tapped against his thigh as he undid the animal-tooth toggle on one of the hard-cased pouches. His fingers met cold, smooth glass. Though he'd expected it, he still felt a small amount of revulsion as he procured one of the several small vials and held it up for them to see.

"Is that…" Oliver breathed.

"Shifter-serum," Jean agreed. "We believe it's the way most if not all of the Titan-shifters became what they are."

He turned the thumb-sized vial in his fingers, watching the clear liquid dance inside the glass. It was somewhat tapered and unlabeled, sealed with a kind of waxy paper tied over the blunt end and capped with even more creamy wax, presumably for ease of loading into a syringe. He replaced it with the others and pushed his fingers entirely into the pouch, carefully counting. There were five in here and, on inspection, five more in the second pouch along with two syringes.

"Are they all the same?" Baena asked. "Aren't the shifters all slightly different?"

"There's no way for us to know," Jean said. He refastened the toggles.

Fhalz was eyeing the pouches. "We should destroy them."

Jean shook his head. "I want to talk to Mercedes about it first. Plus, it's probably a good idea to bring them back to Hanji for study."

Fhalz scoffed and moved away. "Like that's really going to be possible when we get back, even if she's still alive."

Jean watched him go, but didn't retort. He set the belt back on the counter and decided to go find Mercedes. As he left the area he called, "Hey, Oliver – if you wouldn't mind, just, keep an eye on the basement, would you?"

"Sure."

The air became very still when he reached the top of the stairs, as if he'd entered the clouds. The sunlight streamed through the skylight above them, creating a blinding column in the center of the square of corridors with all of their closed doors. All except one – to his right. Jean padded softly over to it, the tiredness creeping onto his back. He pushed open the door.

Judging by the single-size bed on the left and the cobwebbed toys arranged in an unexpectedly orderly fashion along the right side of the room, and the cheery terracotta-painted walls with a border of animals stenciled in gold just below the ceiling, this had been Mercedes' childhood bedroom. The ivory-colored curtains that framed the window above the bed were motionless, transformed into fluted columns. Mercedes sat in the middle of the room in a puddle of sunshine on the dark rug, where she had drawn something in the dust like a monochrome fingerpainting. She looked up at his entry, her eyes as bleary as her grandmother's, and suddenly she seemed to him as small as she must have been back then; the room as vast and yet as close as memory.

Without saying anything, Jean wandered toward her. He felt small, too. It was like they had become children again by virtue of being in this room, uncertain of one another but also recognizing that it was they who stood together against the weight of the sunshine, their exhaustion, the rest of the house, the rest of the world. He wondered what their lives would have been like were they to have met as kids. Would she have teased him or hid from him? Would he have put flowers or mud in her hair? Would they have become gentler people as a result, and maybe never have survived something like Trost?

He reached out and snagged a tendril of her hair with his fingertips. He wasn't sure what to say to her, so he observed, "I'm not used to seeing your hair down."

"Don't worry, it won't be for long," she replied, her voice low and husky and reminding him that she'd likely been crying. The last he'd heard it like that was back in the Forest of Giant Trees, when he'd carried her back along the road and their hatred of one another had begun to decay.

"That's not what I meant," he said. "It's nice."

"Not practical, but thank you," she said dully. After a moment, though, she leaned a little into his hand and he continued lightly stroking her scalp.

He looked down at her dust-drawing in the short pile of the dark blue and red rug. At first he only saw random designs – swirls, haphazard shading, and arcs over the rich, detailed pattern – but then he realized he was looking at a rough rendering of a woman's face.

Seeming to detect his question, she said softly, "I was trying to see what I could remember of my mother." She reached out and touched the corner of one of the eyes, softening it. "I can't even remember the last time I dreamt about her. All I have is dust."

There was a sharp pang in his chest that made him want to scoop her into his arms, but also reminded him of his own mother. What had happened to her? Had she managed to evacuate? He tried not to dwell, and focus on preparing them to go home – and right now, he needed to make sure Mercedes got back her focus, too.

Jean recalled what he'd been told she said to Julia, but figured now wasn't the time to bring it up. "What was her name?" He knew Erwin had spoken it on top of the Sina gate, but the heat of the moment had scorched it from his memory.

"Amaranta," she murmured. She exhaled loudly through her nose as a single, bitter laugh. "It's meant to mean 'unfading' – I remember that much. I think there was also a flower with the same name. At least," her voice dropped even lower, "that's what Julia told me." There was a long silence that Jean didn't know if he should fill, but then she added, "I shouldn't have said those things to her."

"Maybe not," Jean ventured. He turned around and with a small struggle, managed to push open the casement window. As though rushing to fill a void, the breeze came inside and stirred the little windchime hanging in the center of the frame. "But we all say things we don't mean when we're upset." He turned down the red comforter on the made bed to reveal the tucked-in white sheets, and turned those down too; dust wafted into the air. He sat down and one of the mattress springs squeaked. "Hey. Come here," he coaxed.

Mercedes looked up at him; by her initial reluctance to abandon her drawing he wondered if he'd made the wrong suggestion, but her expression soon warmed and she came to him. They stared at the hazy portrait of her mother for a minute or two; her hand slipped over his on his knee and her fingers nestled into the gaps of his own.

"She seemed beautiful and brave," he said. "And she had a pretty name. I like it." He paused. "I'm…sorry."

"For what?" He could feel her voice reverberating through his body on account of her being pressed against him.

"For what happened to her. But at least you know she stuck to her guns, and that she wanted to come home to you."

Mercedes hummed in agreement. He was still too focused on looking around her room – noting the rocking horse and moth-eaten butterfly net in the corner, the shelf of storybooks on the wall to their left and the sketch of what looked like a map above them, the chest of drawers and armchair to their right – to notice that she had apparently looked him over until her hands were angling his torso.

"Oh my god, you were shot," she said.

Jean couldn't help but laugh. He felt her wiggle a finger into the bullet hole in his shirt above his shoulder, and her nail graze the gauze. "You've had worse I think. We should probably change our dressings soon come to think of it."

"Yeah," she sighed, and sat back.

Another long pause; he could feel them breathing in time and yet again, he was reminded of how tired he still felt.

"What do you think is waiting for us when we get back?"

Jean frowned, thinking of the death and destruction he'd left behind a few days ago. The more pessimistic side of him doubted there was anything or anyone left, but he forced that out of mind too. "When we left…Commander Erwin had apprehended Zackly for what he did to you. He had left someone – presumably Hanji or Levi – in charge of the rescue mission. If they got Eren out successfully, then maybe they're managing to hold out." His gaze drew again to the map on her wall; unlikely though it was that it was of their known world, he felt like he was staring at one of many on Erwin's desk. "Titans have likely overrun at least half of Wall Rose's territory by now. The most strategic tactic would have been to evacuate the…affected people to the walled districts and _then_ Sina. Klorva and Karanese were already pretty full but now it's probably worse. With the increased population density – if they chose that tactic – they're going to come under even more pressure from Titans. They'll be cut off except for the elevators that go up to the top of the Wall, and that's no way to both distribute provisions _and_ work a defense."

Mercedes looked at the map too. Her other hand carefully ran over his back, up and down from the small to the nape of his neck. "Coup or not, Pixis will likely have drawn everything but a skeleton crew from up north. But the Garrison can't handle it all alone, and there's probably only six Elite Squads, barely any of which are veterans. Survey Corps are present, which is a blessing, but it's still not enough to handle riots. Do you think Commander Dok is pushing the Military Police to action?"

He was surprised she was able to get into the strategic mindset in light of all that had gone on that day so far, but took it as a good sign. Like her rubbing his back, having a conversation like this with her for the first time was also soothing in its own way. "I'd hope he is. I don't see how he could avoid it. But then, I don't know the guy – who knows what he's thinking in light of deposing King Fritz _and_ the Commander-in-Chief so close together."

In his periphery, he saw Mercedes look at him. "We can't focus on that. What we're looking at is letting Erwin handle things at Sina, including Commander Dok if needs be, and letting Hanji and Levi wrangle Eren and the Survey Corps. You and I need to focus on getting Marco back inside the Walls and supporting Pixis and the Garrison with Titan-killing."

He turned to her fully then, smiling. She looked quizzically back at him. "'You and I', huh?" he quipped, and then breathed in deep, contentedly. The image made him happier than he thought it would and, coupled with the confidence he remembered Erwin placing in him, for the first time in a while the future held a little hope, looked a little brighter.

Then, Jean remembered the fire. He remembered Marco's strength waning. He remembered Eren becoming overwhelmed, or not able to transform at will, or risking losing his humanity. He remembered all the Titans they'd fought through just outside Trost, as if they'd simply been waiting to be let in. Hordes of them. He remembered the three broken gates. The screaming – etchings of it, captured in the singing of the windchime dancing above them.

"What's wrong?"

Her voice brought him back, and after a moment, the concern in her face prompted him to speak. "I was just thinking about the gates," he began quietly. "Even if we were only able to seal the outer Trost gate, we don't know if Marco or even Eren have that hardening ability. I don't know if we'll have enough."

She considered this, her dark eyes dropping.

"But…" Jean was afraid of the thought that'd come next, afraid to speak it but compelled to do so because she was the only one who could hear it and insodoing, remove some of its teeth. "We have your father's serums. What if…for humanity…I…"

Mercedes' expression darkened and intensified and she brought her face close to his, holding his own with her hands. Even the cut on her right cheek, mirroring the one he'd received from her father, seemed to grow darker as though in warning. Jean could see a hundred responses flash behind her eyes, but she merely quoted him, "'I think I like you better as a human being.'"

It was enough. The fear and the idea it'd accompanied fell apart under her gaze, like broken chains, and he was free of it. Gratefully, tiredly, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. They sat there for what felt like forever, breathing together, bodies relaxing, until he wasn't fully sure where he ended and she began.

"Let's sleep," he suggested. "I'm so tired."

They laid down on the small bed that was too short for him, Mercedes resting her bad leg tenderly across his own with the slightest of winces and nestling her face into his shoulder. He wrapped one arm around her and draped his other over his chest, feeling the sunshine drape over them like a blanket. The windchime sounded sweet and peaceful again. He glanced at her – she was staring back at him with a look of wonder.

"What?" he asked, reaching out with his free hand and lazily tapping her nose, which made her blink.

"Nothing," she said. "It's just…I remember Granna telling me that my mother had an uncanny intuition. She used to dream of things sometimes that would come true later. I think I dreamt of this once, before we'd even met. Strange, isn't it? I never would have thought." She smiled sleepily.

He smiled back. "Then let's see what else you can dream up." They closed their eyes. _While we still can._


	18. Chapter 18: Catalysts

**Chapter 18: Catalysts**

Marco helped Julia hack her way through a pile of vines and weeds down the opposite side of the stables from the house. They hadn't spoken much beyond giving and acknowledging instructions, and he still wasn't sure whether she'd commandeered his help for his distraction or her own – then again, maybe it was both, and maybe it didn't matter. The fresh air and sunshine felt good despite the dark thing in the basement beneath the house that everything seemed to be revolving around, like the flesh of a fruit around its stone.

They passed through the earthy veil into the rest of the orchard that he'd unknowingly been plundering the fringes of a couple of days ago. The two rows either side of him consisted of six gnarled, mature fruit trees, already leafed out for the spring and laden with pinkish-mauve and white flower buds. The layers of dead leaves and tufts of grass came up to their ankles and made a satisfying _shush_ sound as they waded forward."Ms Julia," he said as she wandered ahead of him, even with her limp. "There's no fruit at this time of year."

She reached up and grabbed a low-hanging branch, disturbing bees that had come to visit the flowers. She inhaled the sweet scent deeply. "I know."

"Then…what are we looking for?"

"Bees have nested in that tree down there for years," she held a hooked finger out to the end of the rows, where a barely-distinguishable huge, half-decayed trunk stood sentinel. "Maybe we can get some honey. If we can't get much else by way of food, it'll help keep us going."

As they trudged forward they disturbed roosting birds, and their startled flight sent petals raining onto their hair and shoulders. Marco was just beginning to think of polite ways to divert them from digging around unprotected in a bee hive when Julia suddenly stopped, and turned to him. He stood uncomfortably under her gaze in the green light for several moments.

"Did you think about leaving?" she asked.

Marco was startled by the question and the strangely stern compassion on her face. He didn't know such a combination of attitudes could exist but there it was, on this tiny woman, tying his tongue and making his heartbeat speed up.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," she said. She put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. She tilted her head and looked at him with squinted eyes down her nose. "As complicated as you've made things, I'm glad you stayed. But you do understand that you're too far in, now, to _not_ go back with us?"

"I, I didn't –"

Julia shook her head. "It's not an idea you just give up – not for you at least. I don't see you as the sort easily able to continue being a perceived burden." She reached out and held his shoulder. "You're a sweet boy. I'm a sucker for sweets. I understand what drove you to do the things you did. Yet there is a softness to you – to many of you in my house, in fact, to varying degrees – that you can't help but be swayed by. You're not the sort to let the world make you hard; I think it'll be with you for the rest of your life. That's not a bad thing, but it means that again and again you will think about leaving."

Marco frowned and looked at the ground – all the things underfoot that he now had the ability to snuff out with barely a second thought and return to the wind, but never would if he could avoid it. He knew she was right. "I told Jean I would come with you, though," he said.

Julia eyed him with the critical look he remembered seeing on Mercedes back in their trainee days – a simpler time reaching out to him.

"I am!" he blurted, though he didn't know why he was defending himself against a barely-there accusation of something he wasn't intending. Was he?

"Mercedes and Jean will be very hurt if you didn't see this through," she said. "I know it'll be difficult, and I don't know what you'll choose after it's over, but you have to do this."

"Please stop questioning my resolve, Ms Julia," he pleaded.

"Fine, I'll believe you. But please remember one thing."

"What's that?"

"You're no longer alone, Marco," she said softly. "You see that, right?"

Marco considered her words – really considered them – and felt an old sadness creep over him like the vines that had covered the trees. He remembered how he'd felt in the time following Two Swords – Léon – taking him under his wing; how isolated he'd felt mentally and physically from everything he'd ever known. His eyes prickled and his body developed a dull ache.

"You're not alone," Julia repeated. She came forward and hugged him and wouldn't let go.

* * *

The Jaguar Squad stood around the dining table, listening to the front door close behind Eve as she went to check on the horses. Léon's belt was between them, with one of the hard-cased pouches open and its contents spread over the surface to glimmer in the light like fish scales.

"'Cee wouldn't like it, but…we could take them," Fhalz murmured.

"An hour ago you were the one saying we should destroy them!" Baena hissed back. "And who says I want to mess with that shit?" Her eyes were wide with alarm.

"Well neither do I but we need everything we've got," Fhalz said, folding his arms a little tighter. "'Cee can't really fight like she is, we don't know what's left at the Walls, we don't know if we can count on Marco, and we don't know what's left of the military or if Eren – that Rogue Titan guy – was successfully rescued. And this is all presuming we even make it back. Personally I think we were lucky to make it here."

"We'll be fine," Baena insisted. "Have a little more faith."

"No, I don't think we will," he said. "There's too few of us, as mere mortals anyway. But four of us with…abilities…"

Oliver frowned. He reached out and tapped one of the vials, making it roll a little back and forth and clink against its neighbor. "'Cee wouldn't want us to," he intoned.

"Damn right she wouldn't," Baena agreed.

Fhalz shifted feet. "Sometimes she protects us too much, and the cause suffers. Sometimes we have to do things without her consent because she'd never ask us to."

Baena jabbed a finger at the vials. "What do you think these are, magic potions?" Her hand flattened and cut through the air, and her voice rose, "They are _not_ a solution to our problems. They are _not_ predictable, and most of all, _not_ a temporary thing. We could end up as something useful like a Burning or Colossal Titan, yes, but we could also end up a slobbering, disproportioned, flabby mess. That's supposing we even survived a transformation. And you are _stupid_ to believe otherwise. The risk isn't worth it and _that's_ why 'Cee would never ask us to even think about it, because she knows that." She stood upright and put her hands on her hips. "You're supposed to be the smart one. I'm disappointed."

"Disappointed because you didn't think I'd actually speak a hard truth? That I wouldn't have the guts?" Fhalz's voice rose too.

"Hey, please," Oliver held his hands up in a placatory gesture. "Let's calm –"

Baena bore down on their shorter counterpart. "Disappointed because I thought you had _more_ guts than to resort to something like this, and that you were smart enough to be the one to figure out another way!"

"I have spent whatever brainpower I have on protecting us," Fhalz snarled back into her face, but Oliver could see the note of desperation in his eyes. "Do you know how much it hurts to hear you say that shit? I'm even willing to be the only one who tries it if it means you'll be all right, Baena."

Baena's hand shot out and slapped Fhalz, hard. Oliver could see angry tears in her eyes. She held up a finger and shook her head, "Don't," she choked out, and a moment later stormed away. Oliver heard the front door slam.

Though his expression had initially been one of shock, Fhalz's face soon reddened and became sterner, and he stomped off in the opposite direction. The back door slammed.

Oliver wasn't sure who to go after, and rapidly came to the conclusion that it was better to leave them both alone. With a last glance at the vials, he turned away and decided to check on their captive in the basement.

The pantry was dim and the oil lamp they'd lit inside it had gone out, so Oliver left the door open. At the far end, its corner cut off by the underside of the stairs, was the other door that led down to the basement. He hesitated before opening it.

He remembered the look in Mercedes' eyes when they'd originally brought her father down there. He'd never seen her like that before. The things he'd heard afterward had been equally as harrowing, even from the top of these stairs. It wasn't that he disagreed with her course of action, exactly, but this whole scenario had put him on edge and, as evidenced by Fhalz and Baena's spat, made him feel as though their squad was drifting apart and becoming different people – harsher people. He had never been the sort to believe that someone could be totally good or totally evil, or that anyone was beyond redemption or temptation. For her father's sake he hoped Mercedes believed it too, deep down, and was fairly sure she did considering how the two of them had often talked about it over the years. But was all of this evidence of her not believing it anymore? He had always looked to her as their moral compass, and couldn't imagine taking over that role.

Oliver heard a crash from the basement. Frowning, he undid the latch of the door and carefully made his way down the stairs. The slats creaked under his weight in the dark. His eyes had adjusted to the dark by the time he reached the bottom and even the faint light from inside shone like a gleaming thread stretched around the door at the bottom. He warily opened it.

Mercedes' father smiled innocently up at him at his entry. Oliver wasn't sure, but he thought the chair he was in had moved. The stool and the breakfast tray of torture implements it held had been toppled.

"Sorry to disturb," Léon said amicably. "I'm afraid I was hoping to reach that water on the shelf there," he nodded at it, "and try to drink some before my daughter came back and tried to drown me with it. Silly thought, really."

Oliver frowned at him. He glanced at the shelf around knee-height, saw the bucket of water and wondered how in the world Léon planned on drinking from it without the use of his hands or being able to move his chest. He debated giving him some, but wondered Mercedes placing it so far out of reach was another small method of torture that he shouldn't disturb.

"Thank you for the thought, but I'm not thirsty anymore."

Oliver took a couple of paces farther into the room, scanning it though he wasn't sure what he was looking for. He wished he had taken better stock of the room while he was in it – he would have been better able to tell if anything was amiss.

"Oliver, is it?" Léon asked.

How did he know? When had he heard his name? Oliver kept quiet, however inconsequential the query seemed.

"You're a rather large fellow, aren't you? Colossal, some might say." The older man chuckled to himself. "The military must be fortunate to have you fighting against baddies like me."

He was intrigued even though he knew he shouldn't remain down here. There was something compelling about the man, just like there had been something compelling about Mercedes. They both seemed to exude it from their pores. Oliver almost wanted to stay for that fact alone – to see how they did it.

"Speaking of: I'm surprised all of you are still here. Aren't there Walls that need your divine intervention? They may still stand a chance if only the eight of you can get there in time!"

Oliver looked at him sharply before he could stop himself.

Léon's head rolled to one side and he grinned. "Poor taste, I'm sorry."

His pale blue eyes refocused on him. Léon's face was extremely expressive, but it was the fact that he couldn't be sure if those expressions were genuine or purely theatre that made him hypnotic to watch. It made him wonder if Mercedes was mostly theatre, too, and if so, what she may be disguising.

Léon continued in a more serious tone, "In all honesty, though, despite everything that's happened, I do have a goodly amount of faith in my daughter to think of something. That young man she seems interested in doesn't seem too dull of a blade, either. She's smart, that one." He looked at the ground without moving his head. "Did you know: not long after her fifth birthday, one afternoon she comes to me and says "Daddy, I want to know how to read a map.". I look at her and smile, and say "Of course, sweetness," and take her over to a map of the Walls in her grandfather's study. She shakes her head at me. "No," she objects, "not that kind of map. I know that one." She dances over to one of her grandmother's bookshelves and pulls out this kitchen tile-sized tome, an inch thick." Léon looked up at Oliver, pausing, baring his teeth. "What do you think she opens to show me?"

Oliver looked at him askance, but did not reply.

Léon tilted his head proudly. "She opens a book of anatomy and points to a full-length depiction of the body, with thin vellum sheets overlaying the skeleton with all its known veins, muscles and skin. "A map of bones," she says to me."

Oliver happened to glance at the man's ruined right hand with its bracelet of dried blood and exposed flesh, the hand that hung limply from it. A shiver ran up his spine.

"When I was the age you both are now, perhaps a little younger, I always wanted to be more than I was. Smart, like Mercedes turned out to be, or strong like you. Part of me is still envious. I wanted to be able to do more for those I cared about."

_Why is he telling me this?_ Oliver wondered. _Why am I still standing here listening?_

"You're more of a listener, are you?" Léon suggested as though reading his thoughts.

Oliver wanted to say something to throw him off the scent, but couldn't think of anything good enough. For some reason he didn't want to show defeat by heading for the door, and this made him feel oddly trapped.

"I just hope it does you some good in the long run. A vessel isn't of much use if it doesn't eventually divulge. Can you call a well a well, a cup a cup, if you never draw water from it, never drink?" Léon's eyes pinned him in place, the ghost of a smile forever around his lips. Again his head tipped, again he squeezed his eyes shut as though pained, "Oh, poor you. Listening to me rambling on like this. You deserve a medal. But before I shut up, I have two secrets to tell you."

"Secrets?" Oliver finally uttered.

Léon looked mock-surprised. "That got your attention, did it? Down to business, then. First, a little advice." He paused. Oliver took a couple of steps closer, for his voice was low as he continued, "Do not wait until you have all the information before you act. Sometimes a risk needs to be made in order to bring the rest of the facts into being." He shrugged, "A catalyst, if you will. The universe is made of catalysts – of risks – when you get down to it."

Oliver's brow furrowed. "And the second?"

Léon leaned forward as much as his bindings seemed to allow. This time, it was an apologetic smile that raised the corners of his mouth. He whispered, "Much simpler: you should always check your captive over completely if you leave them alone for a long period of time. I've been free before you even came down the stairs."

Léon burst upright from the chair, cut ropes flying, and kicked Oliver hard in the stomach. Oliver stumbled back a few steps and into the wall by the door. Before he could react, he saw a shovel flying toward his face. It impacted with a teeth-gnashing _clunk_, and all went dark.


	19. Chapter 19: Children

**Chapter 19: Children**

Satisfied that the boy wasn't getting up, Léon gently propped the shovel against the wall and paused, listening. There were no sounds of alarm, no footsteps, no doors opening or closing. As he had determined earlier, the house was in all likelihood empty.

He had heard his mother and Marco leave, Mercedes go upstairs, presumably Jean follow her, another one leave, the Squad arguing over his vials before two of them stormed out and leaving Oliver. Over the past hour he'd listened intently and learned what he could. It had been a skill his mother used to chastise him for, say he could hear a secret from the other end of the house, and though it had proved useful over the years it had not been enough to save 'Mara and as such, only served now to mock him.

_Time to leave,_ he thought. _There's little more you can do here with only one hand._

Léon carefully ascended the stairs and emerged into the pantry. Paused, listened. Still nothing, but he would have to get to his horse as quickly as possible nonetheless. He peered around the doorframe of the pantry in all directions and did not see anyone, but took careful steps to the left to the end of the hall nonetheless. At the end, with its view into the kitchen, he spotted his rifle and swords on the kitchen counter. He dashed to them, grabbing one of the two belts he wore – the one with his scabbards – and discovering he did not have the finesse to arm himself.

_Take them, but may as well leave the rifle for Mercedes, _he decided with a sigh. The curl of her name in his mind made his body fall still and the urgency and viciousness of his mind drop into silence. Sadness grew in their wake, like water freezing into ice, tinged with guilt. He looked down the hall to the lip of the stairs, frowning.

"Mercedes," he whispered.

With a tighter grip on his swords and their belt to limit their noise, Léon crept through the house to the stairs. He took them two at a time, remembering exactly where to place his feet to avoid the squeaks and groans. At the top he paused, listened. Still nothing. His eyes couldn't help but scan the walls and note where each bedroom lay – in front of him slightly to the right, his eldest brother Valentin's; in front slightly to his left across the hall, the one he had shared with 'Mara; then, skipping the door to the playroom to the one in the far left-hand corner behind him, his youngest brother Rafael's; directly behind him, his second eldest brother Joaquin's; the far right corner behind him, that belonging to his third eldest brother, Alejandro. And finally, he turned to the nearest right-hand door that stood open, pouring sunshine and a breeze out to greet him – Mercedes' room.

Each step was soft but certain. It had been sixteen years since he had last made this journey. Only this time, when he reached her doorway and looked inside he did not see his little cat curled fast asleep under the cloak of night with only the starlight in her bed. Instead he saw her in broad daylight, as a young woman who had grown into her birthright of the jaguar family legend, stretched out against the young man that Léon had seen ignite love in her eyes. The two of them were sleeping; the curtains danced in the breeze dangerously close above their heads but never quite touched them.

Against his better judgment, Léon wandered into the room to stand right beside them. He stared at them. Everything he had done and everything he had yet to do made him feel leaden, as if he was now another wall against the bed like the one they laid against. They would be free of him when he finally chose to move. He relished both the ability to trap them and the ability to free them merely by a choice, a footstep. He could kill them here, now; he could spare them.

His heartbeat quickened a little when he saw Jean shift a little in his sleep, but his eyes did not open. The boy's hand drifted a little to unknowingly fall from Mercedes' waist to the rise of her hip, and his head bowed a little more to her dark crown.

Would this be the one she married, Léon wondered? What would their children look like? How many would they have? Would they eventually come to live here, or would they find some other place to call home? What stories would she tell them of their Papa – or would she tell none at all?

Léon felt the same queasy mix of panic, regret and wretchedness as he had felt in the basement, when she had held the knife to her throat and tricked him into revealing the truth. Her lying here with this boy had tricked him again into revealing another truth – that he had no right to such speculations anymore.

_'Mara…what did I do to our family? What did I do to our child? Why am I not strong enough to make amends, try again, build yet another house in which what remains of us might find shelter and be born anew?_

The windchime that his father had made for Mercedes mere months before he was killed tinkled above his head, as if counting down the minutes. He smiled bitterly at it.

His eyes were drawn back to his child, and they watered.

_You have to leave, now,_ his logic warned him.

But his body was rooted to the spot. His good hand reached out for his daughter's back, facing him, and the mess of her hair – his hair, his mother's hair – but wouldn't touch it. He was shaking and his vision was betraying him by growing even more blurry. What songs would his heart sing without her?

_You fool. There are no songs for a traitor to sing – his heart does not deserve them. _Léon's hand dropped. His eyes slowly cleared. He looked again at Jean, and said in the slightest of whispers, "Take care of her for me. You seem better able to do it than I."

Finally he looked for one last time at Mercedes. He could not say goodbye to her. Not this time. He held his breath and, just like that summer night he and her mother had left, leaned over and kissed her temple, just light enough to feel how warm she still was after all these years. He then leant upright and walked immediately, quietly, from the room without looking back.

* * *

_Children were calling her. Four of them – four distinct voices, two more mature than the others – how could they be so distinct when she didn't recognize them? But wait – there was one that she did. It was her own, from so many years ago. Yet she didn't remember playing with that many other children; until she was a young teenager she'd always been around her grandmother, or with her horse._

_Mercedes felt her feet beneath her, tracing the voices, and the farther she traveled the more she could see in the dream. Her feet, bare, were on warm cobbles; she wore a robe as if she'd just woken up. She leaned on a pillar of some kind with flowering vines twining around it and her gaze rose to a small courtyard of a stately home with a babbling fountain in the middle. Four children were chasing each other around this fountain: one, the smallest, she immediately recognized as herself, aged maybe four; the next smallest was a little boy of maybe six with dark curls; finally the two twin girls with reddish chestnut hair, taller, maybe a couple of years older still. They were all dressed in comfortable smocks stained here and there with grass, dirt or juice and their angular faces were aglow with exercise and happiness._

I remember this. This isn't a dream. They're…they're family,_ Mercedes realized. She peered closer as the children made yet another lap around the fountain and could feel her dream-self frowning. _My cousins?_ She'd forgotten about this. The one visit she'd had from her cousins – the children of Uncle Alejandro and Aunt Jana, though he'd been dead for a few years by then. Who even knew where they were now._

Except, we weren't playing around a fountain in a courtyard,_ Mercedes recalled._

_Having heard her, the dreamscape began to flicker – instead of a courtyard, their surroundings was the north yard outside the Carello ranch and the little hillock where her uncles and grandfather had been buried, and instead of a fountain, they were weaving in and out of headstones. The view shifted rapidly between the two scenes as if one was printed on the inside of her eyelids, with only the sunshine and the children to link them._

Why am I remembering this now? _she wondered as she took a tentative step forward. The soles of her feet weren't sure if they felt grass underfoot or stone, which made them tingle._

_Wind lifted her hair and in that moment she was back on the Wall, though she couldn't tell if it was Sina, Rose, or Maria. Below her stretched row upon row, acre upon acre of gravestones. Her hands held that of two young children either side of her but she was unable to look at them. In the half-light she heard a windchime, and her father singing._

"Pale grows the grass on the hill, pale falls the moon,  
Forever show the way;  
Dark grows the grass on the hill, dark falls the moon,  
Forever hide my way.

One day I'll lie under the grass on the hill,  
One day the hill will hide my bones,  
But tonight, tonight – I'll lay under the moon,  
Tonight, tonight, it will wash me clean." 

* * *

Mercedes stirred. The windchime above her head was tinkling urgently, the sound drawing her awake. She felt Jean beside her, but the warmth it gave to her body and heart was being leeched away by a peculiar need to get up, to go downstairs.

_"One day I'll lie under the grass on the hill,  
__One day the hill will hide my bones…"_

She rubbed her eyes and carefully removed Jean's arm, standing, regaining her balance, moving through the fog of her consciousness. The warmth of the rug was under her bare feet, and then the glossy floorboards. She was out in the hall, squinting at the column of sunshine like a courtyard between all the rooms.

_"One day I'll lie under the grass on the hill…"_

Mercedes couldn't hear anyone, but didn't want to speak into the quiet either. She thought she could feel the wind from the top of the Wall in her dream disturb her hair, thought she could still feel little hands in hers, but those sensations were ghosts.

_"One day the hill will hide my bones…"_

Her father's voice echoed in her skull. She could even feel it, like a reed poking her brain and the backs of her eyes, up her throat until they caught and splintered between her teeth. It made her face warm in an unpleasant way. An image of the graveyard came back to her and she began to head for it without knowing why, as if his voice was coming from there.

_"Pale grows the grass on the hill, pale falls the moon…"_

Mercedes had reached the bottom of the stairs and stood there looking around her as though in a trance. Her body was pulled toward the back door.

_Where am I going?_

The living, dining, and kitchen areas were deserted but her father's things lying on the counter felt like bodies, like people, and two of them – his swords – were missing; two people were missing, and she was grabbing his rifle and it felt like it belonged there in her hand. Her other hand grasped the back door handle and opened it to the warm air.

_"Dark grows the grass on the hill, dark falls the moon…"_

She stood on the doorstep, her eyes following the wavering line of the overgrown shrubbery from left to right until she could just about see the beginning of the hillock where her grandfather and uncles had been laid to rest.

_Where is everyone?_ A breeze stronger than the haze in her head lifted her hair; she heard the whinny of a horse.

Her father, on horseback, tore across her vision, just barely visible above the cloud of green.

Everything suddenly became clear. Mercedes was barely conscious of her movements or the pain they provoked in her wounds – she bolted from the doorstep and tore through the wild garden, heading after him with the rifle in hand. Mud and stems were crushed underfoot, branches scratched at her arms, and then she was free of it. She tore over the grassland even as the chocolate-colored horse he'd stolen grew farther away.

Mercedes bared her teeth as a nameless fury overtook her and her pain. She veered left, making a curve that would take her to the graveyard and the higher terrain. The land began to rise – the headstones were grouped like the fingertips of a Titan emerging from the earth and weeds – a buried crown.

"_One day I'll lie under the grass on the hill,  
__One day the hill will hide my bones."_

It was too late for words. There was only one thing that would solve this now. She rushed into the graveyard and crashed to her knees in front of her grandfather's grave, swung the rifle up, propped it on the headstone and braced it against her shoulder.

She heard people calling, and the sound was so distorted in her ears that it could have been the laughter of children, or the breaking-open of stone, of graves. She ignored them and sighted along the rifle, letting the thunder of hooves pull the muzzle to point toward her target.

"_Forever show the way…"_

Her heart clamored in her head, made vacant by its single purpose. Her finger hooked the trigger. She eyed her father's back, his own head. She adjusted the shot, aimed, waited. Her breathing drew down to a shadow. He was almost at the treeline.

"_Forever hide my way."_

Mercedes fired.

Léon jerked forward – she'd hit his shoulder – but did not fall. The horse whinnied but kept running, and Léon held on. She saw his face look behind him briefly before he was lost in the trees.


	20. Chapter 20: Amaranta

**Just a reminder that the character of Eve has been borrowed with the kind permission of and belongs to Wings of Waxx, from her wonderful 'Survival' saga! Check it out!**

* * *

**Chapter 20: Amaranta**

The echo of her shot died in the wind and with it, Mercedes' world became silent. She breathed out, struggled to her feet. Her rage poured away into the earth. The butt of her father's rifle fell to the weeds and she leaned on it as the pain in her leg came back; some of the wounds had split and were now oozing through the old bandages. She stumbled a little to one side, turning on her heel, and smeared blood on her grandfather's grave. Her gaze swept over the trail her father had blazed mere moments ago. It was empty even though its vegetation moved with the wind and people were hurrying toward her. The afternoon sky was cold lead.

She'd done it. What exactly, she wasn't sure, but it seemed like the silence in its wake would be all she'd ever hear. It was as though she'd stepped out of her body and simultaneously felt whole again. The clarity was invigorating.

But she had shot him – shot her own father. She hadn't killed him but it was possible he'd die of his wound, alone out there in the wilderness of his betrayal's consequences. It would be a slow, painful revenge for her; a slow, painful mercy for him.

_Mercy,_ she thought. The realization that she had felt that, too, along with the willingness to damn herself forever was startling. Despite what he had done, she had wanted to show mercy. _I deliberately didn't kill him. I wanted to give him a chance. I wanted to let fate decide – give him a chance with fate, but…I may have sealed my own in the process. I've done an awful thing._ Mercedes looked down, at the graves around her – the unblinking witnesses – and her mouth pressed firmly closed_. I will continue to do awful things. I've stepped over the threshold._ She laughed once, quietly, and it rolled her shoulders. _A dark clarity. Is this…is this what the first step into madness is like? Is this where he went after Momma died? _She recalled the dust-drawing up in her bedroom. _Momma…that's why you trusted your instinct, wasn't it? Murky as it could be. Because you knew clarity was too sharp to handle for too long. I'm sorry._

"Mercedes!" The shout was distant in her hear even though, rationally, Mercedes knew they must be close.

"I'm sorry," Mercedes whispered to herself.

Eve reached her first. Mercedes knew it was her by the fact that she was still wearing her gear – how foreign the equipment looked to her, now – but still didn't look up.

"Hey, you all right?" Eve's voice was muffled; the silence in Mercedes' head was still trying to win.

Mercedes turned away instead of replying, to hide the blood running down her leg. She looked back at the treeline where her father had disappeared.

"Did you get him?"

Mercedes kept staring. What if he came back? What if she was doomed to experience this over and over?

"Mercedes. Hey." A hand was on her shoulder.

What if this was all some horrible nightmare she was trapped in? Or a coma? She held the rifle in her hand more tightly as if it were the only common thread in the last four years of her life and thus a clue to escaping, and the uncertainty disappeared like fog in the morning.

"Mercedes?"

_It's clarity. It's a dark clarity. Momma – I found it. I can do anything._

Her face was struck, hard, to the point that her ear rang. Her head instantly snapped around to focus her stare on Eve's own hard green eyes. Mercedes started to snarl and retaliate.

"Snap out of it!" Eve barked, halting her. "You're not okay. You're bleeding again. And personally, I am tired of all this shit! This ranch has been nothing but a pit in which we've all been torn apart."

"I didn't ask any of you to come," Mercedes growled.

Eve took a step back, but her face remained severe and she put her hands on her hips. She tilted her head to one side. "No, you didn't," she said curtly. "Yet here we are." She threw an arm out to indicate the others approaching. "We all came here because of _you_." They challenged each other's eyes a moment longer. "Look at them!" Eve yelled.

Reluctantly, Mercedes turned. Baena and Fhalz were nearly at the top of the hill now; Jean was sprinting from the back door of the house. Marco and Julia were passing the house, him supporting her though she was clearly trying to pull away.

"It was a struggle to get here and now we have to get you back, and you're jeopardizing that by running around like a crazy person. How are you supposed to fight in your condition? You can't ask us to stay here forever while you settle 'Carello business' and wreck yourself all over again."

Mercedes only half-heard her; her frown was for a different reason. She scanned the others approaching her again. Her heartbeat quickened.

"Don't you get it? People are dying every minute you're out here chasing ghosts," Eve continued. She rounded Mercedes to stand in front of her but slightly to one side, as though out of striking range. "Erwin sent us to get _you_ – not bring back the same half-corpse that hung in front of that gate – because he knew that if you came back, Marco would follow, and we'd stand a chance. You are _ruining_ that chance. You may as well finish your dad's work and kill us all yourself."

"Oliver," Mercedes realized. Her voice strengthened, "Oliver. Where's Oliver?"

Baena and Fhalz reached them, and Baena's arms were immediately reaching out for her, her face consolatory.

"'Cee," Fhalz began.

But she was ignoring them, dropping her father's rifle and stumbling past Baena. Eve's words were somehow sinking in. "Oliver!" Mercedes bellowed at the house, as if it were the one to blame, the source of all the pain, the one to take everything from them. The horror bloomed in her body and insodoing, dropped her to her knees before she could take another step. Despite Baena reaching down and trying to help her back to her feet, Mercedes crawled through the grass and weeds toward the house, calling his name again. Fhalz and Baena's arms encircled her own, holding her back or trying to lift her – she couldn't tell.

Jean dropped to his knees in front of her, chest heaving. "It's okay! It's okay!" he said and placed his hands on her shoulders. "He was just knocked out. He's all right."

Though she still wanted to see Oliver, to make sure, Mercedes calmed a little under his stare. Her heartbeat began to slow.

"What happened? Where's your father?"

"I shot him with his own rifle," Mercedes said, her eyebrows pinched and raised, and her voice coming out breathy broken through the grin she wasn't sure why she was making. It had a certain irony, granted, but she knew by the look of concern on Jean's face that it wasn't the expression he'd been expecting. "He tried to get away," she tried to explain. "Well, he got away," she looked away. "I couldn't kill him because…" she couldn't continue. Her heart fell, her hand fell, and her palm pressed to her thigh and she felt the blood soaking through her mother's skirt, the one she remembering dressing up in as a little girl.

"Damn it, girl!" Julia sniped as she finally got to the top of the hill with Marco.

"Julia, I'm sorry," Mercedes managed, beginning to come down from the obscure high she'd been on. She lost sight of the gravestones as her friends drew more closely in.

"Don't tell her you're sorry," Eve chimed in, rounding her yet again so she was in view. Her arms were now folded. "I really don't think 'sorry' cuts it at this point."

A chorus of defensive voices rose around her at Eve's statement. Mercedes sat quietly for a moment, digesting her words and those that she'd leveled at her earlier. "No, no she's right," Mercedes conceded.

This time she met Eve's eyes without anger in her own. They regarded one another for a moment and without either of them saying anything, eventually Eve's gaze softened somewhat and her posture relaxed.

Mercedes felt queasy; her hands tingled as though they still held the rifle and with it, the weight of the threshold she'd passed over but would never be able to explain, even to the young man in front of her. Despite how much she'd believed him when he'd said what was hers was his. But, Eve was indeed right. They couldn't stay here and wallow any longer. She'd been mistaken in convincing herself that this place could provide comfort – answers, maybe, but not comfort. It was a grave they were all trying to climb out of. She glanced up at Marco and he flinched under that glance. Everyone else was looking at her for answers.

She sighed. "Let's go to Oliver, and…I need new bandages."

Someone – or maybe multiple someones – helped her stand and began to lead her down the hill. She heard someone pick up the rifle and was surprised that she did; the clarity and the peculiar honing-in, the silence she'd experienced before, crept in. Her body felt too loose. Her finger twitched with the memory of having pulled the trigger. She looked over her shoulder as her father had done, but saw nothing.

"_Forever hide my way" – I've done an awful thing._

* * *

The meal that evening was quiet, testy. Food had been meager, though Eve and Jean had managed to hunt a couple of rabbits and Julia had supplemented what little fresh vegetables they were able to find with canned preserves that she swore were still good. The sun was only just beginning to sink below the horizon when the group dispersed for bathing and sleep.

Mercedes avoided everyone, including Jean. She had managed to realize that the silence she was experiencing was actually her father's absence, though she never would have thought him able to take up so much metaphysical space in so short a time and how altered the world would feel when he was yet again no longer in it. The effect was like being handed the opportunity to grieve, that she'd been denied as a child because of her ignorance and, later, denial. She didn't know if she wanted to take it now.

The clarity remained, though – the dark clarity that both shielded her eyes from too much light and made even the colors in the shadows richer – like she'd been nearly blind before and her vision had now been restored. Her senses seemed more awake, each of them. She saw things, and consequently thought things, that she never had before. Walking slowly into her parents' bedroom was like following her father's footsteps – she could see what he must have seen through the crack in the door, noted the positions of the furniture for both defense and escape, remembered which were the squeaky floorboards. But these observations finally all seemed to flow seamlessly into a singular purpose: getting her from point A to point B. Crossing the room to the nightstand where her bangle lay – so simple a task – had the intensity of crossing a Titan's path. Everything was at once moving, intangible, and so very solid and still.

Mercedes sat on the bed she'd lain in for what felt like years. She could even smell the faintest remaining trace of the valerian and, oddly, that equally-faint memory she'd thought she'd had with Marco calling her 'dearest' resurfaced. Her lips burned, but instead of the glass of water that still sat on the nightstand, she reached for the bangle.

As she'd observed before, being gold it had warped somewhat to become more of an oval than a circle, but there was still enough room for her hand. Much of the metal making up its tail and feet was scratched and dented. A few of the smaller stones that'd formed the coat pattern on its back had been lost, but its one remaining emerald eye was still there and managed to glimmer in the sunset shining into the room. She slipped it on and her wrist welcomed the weight, like she'd returned a missing bone.

_"This was my grandmother's,"_ Julia had told her, _"and likely her grandmother's before her. It carries the spirit of the world that was – a better world – inside it, and in it, hope for a new one. It has brought us luck, and now it will guard you."_

_I hadn't been wearing it, so maybe that's why all this crap happened, _Mercedes mused wryly to herself as she turned it over and over on itself.

She saw her discarded gear harness piled in the corner between the dresser and the closest window; a pile of the slightly darker lines on her skin where natural rubbing and chaffing through her clothes had occurred over the years, which Marco had peeled from her body. The image, the imagined sensation, discomfited her and she reached for the harness, gathering it into her arms – restoring herself one piece at a time.

A gentle sigh escaped from her. Mercedes stood, reminded that she still hadn't bathed and re-bandaged her leg. But as she made to leave the room again, her eyes alighted on her mother's chest at the end of the bed. She remembered having wanted to open it ever since she was little and had been upset when Julia had chosen to leave it behind. Speckles of blood, presumably from when she'd knocked her father out with the rifle when he first arrived, were dusted over her initials and the carved ivy that twisted around them in a wreath. Mercedes knelt in front of it. Still holding her gear harness, with her free hand she slid back the decorative bolt on the front, pulled up the catch, and lifted the lid until it stood erect against the foot of the bed.

A shallow tray covering the right half sat on a rim inside the trunk, containing smaller items – a few pieces of dull, mended jewelry; a palm-sized flat stone the color of a storm; a thick ponytail of dark straight hair that Mercedes recognized as her mother's; an envelope containing baby teeth; a silver pocketwatch that ceased to tick. Underneath the tray were a few articles of Mercedes' baby clothing, a couple of books with tattered spines, and a thick folded pile of creamy lace. When she lifted what seemed to be a hem of the lace aloft, Mercedes realized it must be her mother's wedding dress. As she let it gently drop back into the trunk, her eyes caught sight of an envelope wedged into one of the braces of the lid that she hadn't noticed before. Her name had been written in an elegant script across the front. Mystified, she reached out and took it. Her harness was dropped into her lap so she could pull out the letter inside. It was dated October 831.

_Dear Mercedes,_

_I know you will only find this when I am dead and gone; it must seem strange for me to have wanted to write this to you so soon into your sweet life. I wish I could explain my reasoning but I fear I have none other than to put the compulsion to rest. Maybe one day you will need exactly this._

_You are the joy of my life. I never imagined I might hold you and to have that dream come true means I can brave all the terrors of our world. By now you must know what roads your father and I have charted, where the nights took us while you slept – I hope that as a result of our work, our sacrifices, __your__ world is at last one of peace. I hope too that you can understand why we made that choice: it was not because we didn't love you that we left so often; it was precisely because you were our most precious thing that we took every opportunity to be proactive in keeping you safe, so that you might not have to abandon yourself to a life of war, as our families have._

_Yet, my darling one, if you still know two kinds of thunder – that of the sky and that of Titan footsteps – remember that there is a third kind. The third is your will, or your heart if you like. No matter how much this life tests you, you are not given anything that is unsurmountable. Even if you think you have nothing left to fight for, fight for your right to live. You deserve this world, and it deserves you. Live so that death will tremble to take you. Your will is unfading. You are unfading. And of course, my love for you is unfading – remember that always._

_All my love, forever,_

_Amaranta_

A tear dropped onto the page and Mercedes wiped another away. Her eyes traced her mother's signature, its long curls so suddenly reminiscent of her long arms wrapping around her in comfort.

"Your gut was always right, Momma," Mercedes murmured, folding the letter and putting it back in the envelope, as though the ink might fade if it were kept out too long and thus her one remaining connecting with her mother might be lost.

Though she shook a little, her eyes damp, Mercedes was coaxed into putting the envelope down on the bed and, instead of trying on her harness like she'd originally intended and dwelling in that dark place, an invisible hand was pushing her out the bedroom door in search of Jean.


	21. Chapter 21: A Stain Upon The Land

**Chapter 21: A Stain Upon The Land**

_(Five days later)_

There was no one left to scream. The Commanders collectively presided over miles upon miles of ruined silence – the evacuated swathe of land and towns stretching between the shell of Trost through Wall Rose's southern territory and into Ehrmich that already they had begun referring to as the Stain. And the Stain was spreading.

Erwin, standing on Wall Rose at Trost in relentless vigil, stared at everything they had lost – that they were continuing to lose as the hours ticked by. Because it wasn't empty. More Titans that he had ever seen before now freely roamed the land, even at night, diluting it and tainting it as ink discolors water. The borders of the Stain pushed ever outward as the Titans followed the Walls, slowly but surely arcing up from the Southern territories into the Eastern and Western territories too, cutting off the walled districts of Klorva and Karanese. How long before they inundated all two hundred and fifty-six thousand square miles of Wall Rose? How long until humanity had lost every inch of that territory, too?

Efforts to sustain defenses at the breach at Trost had been only moderately successful to begin with. As more and more Titans had managed to slip past them, the more and more their forces were stretched thin trying to both contain them, combat them, and protect the evacuees. The best they were able to do was channel as many civilians as they could into Klorva and Karanese, send the more able-bodied ones northward to try to outrun the encroaching hordes, and use Sina as a last resort. Despite this, there was still no telling the death toll. They had even created a defensive line of soldiers on horseback in an attempt to hinder if not halt the Stain's spread, but the line was frequently broken; there were less and less soldiers to be spared from the breaches to fill the gaps and Erwin longed for the support of his veteran fellow Scouts.

But they were dead. Most things now were dead. The days had been dark since the Burning Titan's disappearance, even after much of the flames that had set the city alight had died – as if the clouds had been replaced by a smoke that would never go away.

Erwin turned on his heel and began to stalk back in the direction of the outer Trost gate. A volley of cannonfire echoed his steps and the hot night air threw his cloak about his shoulders.

He had stationed himself on Wall Rose despite the imminent risk of being cut off from Sina, and a few of his men were with him. They'd made intermittent camps along the top of the Wall but it was to the gate that Erwin was drawn night after night – something compelled him to keep returning to that bloody, broken-open maw of the world he had known so that he could stare or dive or carve deep into the things that rushed into it and down the throat of the new world, drowning it before it could even be fully born.

The gatehouse and the shroud of activity bustling over it loomed ahead, and from out of its shadow Commander Pixis called, "I hope you have some news for us about Eren!"

Sitting on an empty crate beside him was Squad Leader Brzenska, who guzzled water from a canteen. She had been working all day and night from the looks of her and she too eyed him expectantly. The fresh streak of a burn down the right side of her face reminded him of her personal involvement with the Burning Titan – through Mercedes, her apprentice. Brzenska had refused to speak the girl's name since she'd been taken and this seemed to have silenced almost all other conversation with it.

"We believe he's able to control his hardening ability enough at this point," Erwin acknowledged as he came closer. "Levi's team are readying themselves." He didn't tell them how exhausted he knew the team, Eren in particular, to be. It was understood.

"'Enough'?" Brzenska asked. Her voice was jaded, critical. She drained the rest of the canteen and cast it off the Wall as if there was no point in keeping anything anymore, and the mutable silver-gold of her eyes reflected this.

Erwin did not have an encouragement for her. At least, not one that would satisfy – but then, would anything satisfy her and others like her that had poured so much into what now seemed to be a futile effort? They had all been leveled – the time for motivational speeches and wishful thinking was past, leaving them with only the option to speak brute facts or not at all. It felt like even their air was running out and it couldn't be wasted on weak gestures of comfort.

Sensing his reluctance to speak, Pixis said, "It'll have to be, won't it. Since there's been no sign of, err…the reinforcements you sent for."

Brzenska scoffed, stood, and folded her arms.

Erwin didn't blame her. Jean, Eve, Mercedes and the others were likely a lost cause, now, and their returning with the Burning Titan even moreso. Not that it was ever a sure thing. It had been quite unlikely that he'd see them ever again and he'd had to deliberately not think about sending off one of his most promising trainees to die in the Titan-riddled wilderness.

But. If there had been a chance, he was confident that any member of Squad Levi would have seized it, and Jean had the personal connection – to both Titan-shifter and Titan-shifter's motivator – to exploit it successfully, and return.

The three of them barely moved to look over their shoulders or turn their eyes as the lone voice of a soldier shouted in terror below and was rapidly silenced. Erwin was dismayed by how unmoved they were by it. It could have been a mere echo.

"I trust the bell still works?" Erwin asked, shifting feet. His eyes cast about the shadows of the gatehouse.

"You mean, is there someone left to ring it," Brzenska said.

"I suppose I must mean that."

After a pause, Pixis examined him, and then placed his hands behind his back. He called out to the gatehouse, "Anka! Gustav!"

"Sir!" the call was returned.

"On Commander Smith's signal, ring the bell!"

"Sir!"

Pixis walked past Erwin. "I hope this gamble pays off."

Erwin turned to retort, but decided silence was best. Beyond Pixis, he could see Squad Levi approaching. Counting and peering closer in the poor light, he was disappointed to see that Historia was with them despite his encouragement to the contrary, not only because of having recently had to kill her own father – a scourge upon the land in of itself – but also so that she stay in the Interior to keep the people – her people – calm. He thought he could understand her reasoning – no doubt she wanted to lead by example and give them faith in her through her actions – but he hoped tonight wouldn't pronounce the early end of her six-day reign.

He let the Squad come to him, like strength returning, but his eyes were drawn to the absolute blackness beyond the Wall and he felt the wretched stump of his missing arm throb in response to it. He stared at the blackness as though staring down his own death, willing fate to bend.

* * *

The Wall ahead was barely distinguishable except for a line of firefly-small lights, presumably torches, that never seemed to grow larger. Despite the darkness the Titans continued to advance at a moderate pace, drifting like debris down a river. Although this meant less combat for Jean and the others, it was difficult to see the Titans in the dark and made their progress a struggle when they were already exhausted.

"So close, yet so far away," said Marco, seated behind him. They'd had to double-up on three of the five horses they had left and, considering the dynamic and strengths and weaknesses of the group, Jean had volunteered for Marco to sit behind him. Only Oliver and Fhalz by virtue of their size and skill, respectively, rode solo.

"We'll make it," Jean said, as he'd been saying frequently throughout their long ride. He kept his gaze focused ahead on Fhalz, who led the pack, and swerved as he did to avoid a four-meter class and then again for a six-meter.

"Less than six hundred meters!" Fhalz called back.

The closer they drew, the better able Jean was to pick out the broken-open outer gate of Trost and the shouting and cannonfire like sparks surrounding it. He couldn't help but think again of his mother and the threadbare hope he had for her survival, and it made it that much more uncomfortable to have Marco seated behind him. Marco had destroyed that gate – three gates. He'd caused this.

_I can't think about that. Focus. We have to get through,_ he thought. He could feel the thud of the cannonfire even through the thunder of the horses' hooves below him, momentarily cringing at the thought of – after all this – being struck down by friendly fire.

Then, a bell began to ring. Its urgent musicality sank down from the top of the gatehouse and permeated the ever-shrinking distance like mist down a slope. It even, somehow, felt cool on his face.

"Have they seen us?" Marco asked.

"How could –"

There was an all too familiar crack of lightning split the air just behind the gatehouse; its greenish-yellow light illuminate a huge skeleton building itself out of the surrounding shadows before it was lost again. A Titan roared and the bell continued to toll.

"Eren," Jean realized. They swerved out of the way of an absent-minded Titan grab.

"Eren?" Marco repeated. "Then that means – that means the rest of them will be there," he added, his voice betraying panic. Jean felt his grip briefly tighten on his shoulders.

"They must be trying to secure the gate!" Eve called.

"Oh no," Marco said.

"Less than four hundred meters!" Fhalz called.

Jean frowned, turning his head but not his line of sight to Marco. "What's wrong?"

"They can't see me. 'Cee promised they didn't have to see me. They can't know."

The gatehouse reared in front of them now and cannonfire had become more intense. The bell and Eren's roars were louder. Jean could make out what could only be Squad Levi somersaulting through the air of the gap in the gate, surrounding and defending Eren, who was taking up position in that gap and bracing his hands on what remained of the housing.

"What're you talking –"

"I'm sorry, Jean, but I'm getting off early. See you on the other side."

Jean had to look at him, then. He stared, aghast, at his friend's smiling face. "This wasn't the plan!"

"Good luck!" Marco let go of Jean's shoulders and practically fell backwards off the horse. Jean reached out but it was too late.

"Scatter!" Jean yelled to the others.

Another line of lightning screamed in his ear and its impact on the earth jolted Sabine a few steps ahead of herself, nearly throwing Jean off; it was followed shortly by a burst of flame. Everything thereafter was chaos.

* * *

The wind wailed forward, trying to pull Erwin from the Wall, only to become ribbons of fire spiraling toward a gradually-growing inferno in the shape of a Titan. Erwin grimaced and changed his footing.

_It's back,_ he thought. _The Burning Titan._

It stood at perhaps seventeen meters tall, its slim build coated in red, gold, and blue flames that parched the air and were nearly blinding at this distance. It turned its unrecognizable face to the cloudy night sky and seemed to breathe deeply; its exhale threw out sparks. There were shouts of panic around the immediate Wall and another roar from Eren below.

Erwin stepped up to the edge of the Wall, bracing himself on a cannon, and urgently searched the ground at the Titan's feet. Among the dozen or so normal Titans bumbling or falling away from the sight of the blaze danced five horses, two of which seemed to have double-riders. They were barely able to move forward, too preoccupied with dodging cannonfire and the craters they'd created in the ground, and the Titans.

"Hold cannons!" Erwin shouted, holding up his arm.

"Are you crazy?" Brzenska hissed as she ran up beside him. "We're not letting that thing back in! I refuse!"

Erwin faced her square-on. "It's here by my request to help us, and those who risked everything to enable that are down there struggling to get back in."

Brzenska's face contorted into one of absolute horror. She took first one, then a second shaking step away from him. On the third, she stepped backwards off the Wall. For a moment that felt longer than he would have liked, he thought she wasn't going to deploy her lines. But then, he heard their impact – a short, barely-there chink of metal against stone amongst the rest of the cacophony – and saw Brzenska sail toward the fire. He knew there was nothing he could say or do to stop her, now, whatever it was she was going to do.

He rushed to the other side of the Wall to confirm for himself that Levi would rein in his squad in light of the new arrival. With all the shouting – Pixis' voice soaring above those of his men – it was difficult for Erwin to pick out voices that far below, but Eren didn't seem to be moving forward. Indeed, he was backing up. He as well as Squad Levi occupied themselves with clearing the way of Titans. Not only did Erwin feel the heat growing stronger but so was the brilliance of the light that poured around him and through the ruined gate; the shadows of the horses that streamed through below the squad were long, reaching like fingers toward the Stain.

Erwin took cover as the Burning Titan passed through the gatehouse; the stone of the Wall below him even seemed like it was warming in that short span of time and he let his palm linger there to take it in – a faint victory. And then the tower of flame was through, standing on the doorstep of the ruins of Trost like some kind of primeval god surveying its domain and debating what to do with it. Between it and the Wall rose six soldiers on lines, their shadows almost extinguished in the light behind them as they came down to land. But Erwin's eyes remained on the Titan.

It took a step forward, howling, and with a mighty sweep of its arm took out two normal Titans. It careened forward into the Stain to continue its work.

Erwin smiled.

* * *

**A Note from the Author:** Sorry for the delay in posting, everyone! Life keeps happening. At any rate, 'tis the end! Thank you SO MUCH for sticking through all 40+ chapters of this duology and for your kind words! It means a bunch. Look out for more adventures coming soon.


	22. SEQUEL ANNOUNCEMENT

**A Note From The Author**

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading _The Burning Titan _duology. I'm glad you enjoyed them enough to review, favorite or follow. As promised, there is a sequel of sorts – _Hidden Lions_ takes place in the aftermath amidst the stabilizing of the Revolution, wherein Mercedes is not only grappling with what she's done and her place in the new world she helped create, but also with another branch of her family that she's stumbled upon. It doesn't help that Commander Pixis seems keen to send her to investigate a plot to kidnap Annie Leonhardt.


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